I recently conducted a co-creation workshop with a client to generate few, but well-defined ideas.
Few of the conscious decisions we made during the workshop affected the overall output and the flow of the workshop. It also gave me some insights into the factors affecting the choice of your knowledge brokering tactic.
Only 1 HMW per team: To allow for a focused set of ideas and discussions internally within teams
Brainwriting vs Brainstorming: Brainstorming is usually dominated by extroverts and leads to many but less defined ideas. On the other hand, Brainwriting guarantees equal participation and leads to high-resolution concepts in a short time. The better ROI helped make our choice
S.C.A.M.P.E.R: During our dry run, we realized the importance of prompts/frameworks to build on ideas. The SCAMPER framework provided crucial assistance Group Sketching + Value Horizon Matrix: While Brainwriting was a silent exercise, the discussion followed by group sketching increased the energy of the group ending in assessing the idea and plotting on the Value Horizon Matrix
The selection of a knowledge brokering tactic largely depends on balancing the desired output (expected number and quality of ideas) with the availability of resources (participants and time). Let’s look at each of the elements of the knowledge brokering model and re-assess the decisions we made while designing the workshop
Process Phase: It is essential to assess your current phase of the design process. This in some ways also relates to the desired output of your exercise. Some knowledge brokering tactics are better suited to generate ideas while some others can be used to add depth and diversity to existing ideas.
Number of Participants: (Low: < 3, Medium: 3–5, High: 5+)
Knowing the participants, both ‘How many’ and ‘Who’, is one of the most important elements in deciding your tactics. Activities such as body storming or future state mapping work best with a small number of participant whereas Brainstorming thrives best in a larger group where people can build off each other’s ideas and enthusiasm. It is equally important to tailor your tactics basis who’s participating e.g. the kind of activities best suited for a group of CXO’s vs college kids will vary widely.
Time for Activity: (Low: < 30 min, Medium: 30 min-2 hours, High: 2 hours — 1 day/2day)
Time is a universal denominator when it comes to measuring the efficiency of any knowledge brokering tactic. Ideation using future state mapping or Bodystorming can lead to high-quality results provided the participants take enough time to map out the nuances of each activity and have a good understanding of the context before they begin the exercise. Brainstorming can yield relatively reasonable results within a short span of time and can be usually combined with some other tactic to improve the quality of its results. Brainwriting had the most potential to yield high-quality results within a moderate span of time. This was one of the important factors influencing our choice of the ideation method.
Background Context required:
Some tactics require the facilitator to immerse the participants in the actual context of the exercise either by situating them in a different environment or by explaining the context and building analogies and associations. Participants can relatively get into the exercise quickly when it comes to brainstorming, brainwriting and 10 plus 10 with relatively less context. This dictates the usefulness of the exercise and is closely tied in with the amount of time for the activity.
Expected Energy levels:
The energy level of your activity is directly related to knowing your participants. Brainstorming, although highly energetic, can be strongly dictated by extroverts. Introverts might have equally strong ideas that may not come out during a condensed brainstorming workshop. The facilitator plays an important role in mediating such conversations and ensuring that everyone gets to speak their mind. Brainwriting is activity is more neutral in nature as everyone gets to have a voice. Since the audience was a mix of people we knew and some new folks, we decided to use Brainwriting as our key workshop exercise. Another strategy to balance the overall participation and energy of the workshop is to combine activities with different energy levels. We coupled the Brainwriting exercise with group sketching to mutually discuss, agree and build on one idea as a group.
Expected Number of Ideas: (Low: <5, Medium: 5–10, High: >10)
Defining your objective in the expected number and quality of ideas is the most important driver of the model displayed above. Once you have those two metrics decided, you can work backwards, keeping the constraints of time and participants in mind, and decide on the rest of the factors to design your workshop. Activities like brainstorming, 10 plus 10, analogies and associations can lead to a high number of ideas even in a small span of time, although the fidelity of those ideas would be less. Bodystorming, future state mapping can help develop few but really detailed ideas based on particular contexts. These techniques can usually be combined to produce high-resolution results as well.
Expected Quality of Ideas:
There’s usually a tradeoff between the number and the quality of ideas as part of any design workshop activity. This can be offset if you have a lot of time to conduct the activity or if the participants are experts in their field and are well briefed on the context of the conversation. Our assessment was that brainwriting would lead to a moderate number of well-developed ideas which turned out to be true and helped us develop high-resolution presentable concepts during the midway presentation.
Combining multiple activities with complimentary benefits can lead to really innovative results. It is also essential to have a backup of activities in your toolkit to substitute an activity on the go which might not be working too well. In the end, facilitation is a skill and can be practised and honed over time. A good facilitator eventually trumps all the factors mentioned above.