We held our sensemaking and ideation workshop on the Youth Voices Initiative on January 28, 2018. We will be publishing more detailed information in this page soon but, in the meantime, we are excited to share some of the tools we used for the workshop in case they are useful for other designers.
First, huge thanks for Lab team member Jayme Cochrane who created gorgeous and compelling tools for our work including the personas described below.
Second, much gratitude to the continuing coaching from Gordon Ross from Open Road Communications who helped us to shape and reshape our day.
First, the GOALS:
Lab Goal
To improve the journey of families throughout BC experiencing family transition, such as separation and divorce, resulting in increased resilience and well-being.
Initiative Goal
To support the well-being of youth whose families have experienced separation and divorce.
Workshop Goals
- Review what we have learned so far, including the experiences of youth themselves
- Identify challenges and turn them into opportunities
- Generate at least 3 well-defined concepts to address the opportunities.
- Leave with a clear short-term plan to move concepts to prototypes, and a list of workshop participants willing to be involved moving forward.
Next, the AGENDA
Youth Voices Sensemaking Workshop Agenda-final
Here are the 3 wonderful personas. Each is in two parts:
- A more traditional layout;
- In their own words: A page with quotes and more information about the parents’ journey through separation (as this may not always be known by the child)
We organized participants into three smaller groups, one for each persona. Each small group was a mixture of background and expertise. We asked each group to follow the same process for their persona:
- Explore and flesh out the persona’s needs, goals and jobs to be done
- For each need, identify barriers
- For each barrier, create a challenge statement: “How can we help to (how can he/she) overcome this barrier?”
- Smaller groupings of 2 or 3 then selected one challenge statement and brainstormed opportunities
- They then selected one opportunity/concept and used their creativity and imagination to flesh it out in more detail
- Each group presented their opportunity at the end of the day to answer the question: “How will this concept help [name of persona]?”
The result was a wonderful selection of creative concepts that were clearly linked to each persona’s real needs. They were definitely new and not just a regurgitation of ideas already out there. Stay tuned for more information on the very creative concepts presented by each group in order to meet the needs of each persona!
And keep an eye on the Lab blog for more photos and information about the workshop and updates as we begin to work with these concepts and move towards the prototyping process!
Special thanks to everyone who participated (from a variety of backgrounds including many of the young people from the first workshop)!
Kari