NearLabs: Community participation + interaction design + storytelling = tangible results

Just wrote this piece for the office blog - I will be helping Nina Honiball and Crystal Campbell of NearLabs to deliver a series of workshops around the themes of Community Participation, Interaction Design and Storytelling to deliver tangible results for people who wish to instil change in their communities.

NearLabs workshop series kicks off this weekend


Following the success of the Emotive Data, Narrative Mapping as a Tool workshop in April 2010 NearLabs return to Soundings office this weekend, Saturday 5th February 10am – 7.30pm to kick off a series of three workshops investigating various aspects of community participation and interaction design, mixed up with a dash of storytelling.

From NearLabs:

“A phenomenon of urban enterprises where citizen participation is implicit is on the rise. These community projects are about connecting like-minded members and localised services to each other within a local setting acting as Urban Apps.”

Find out more and sign up here


Thinkers and Doers:
Guest Speaker: David Barrie (David Barrie & Associates and The People's Supermarket)

Invited Participants: Tessy Britton (Social Spaces and Thriving Too amongst other projects), Kat Davis (Soundings), Pamela Parker (final year MA Creative Practice for Narrative Environments student from Central Saint Martins) and Caf Fean (that's me - creative writer and consultant specialising in public consultation projects)

Workshop Facilitators: Crystal Campbell (Narrative Ecology and NearInteraction) and Nina Honiball (MAKEshift and Soundings)

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Watch out for a posting on Imperica covering our process for developing StoryTelling cards.

Agenda for the first session below.

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AGENDA

SATURDAY 5th February 10.00am sharp

1. Introduction and setting the scene

Themed introductions from each participant.

Guest Speaker.

Facilitated Q&A.

Introduction to Case Study.

Urban Apps Challenge kick-off.

Participants are divided into multi-disciplinary groups of 5.


- Networking and Refreshment Break -


2. Telling Stories & Mapping the Ecology

5 Minutes: presented by Caf Fean (creative writer and consultant specialising in public consultation projects at Soundings)

Telling Stories: StoryTelling work-cards are introduced as the greater framing structure towards effectively designing and creating solution to your challenge. Great stories stimulate both an emotional and a logical response. The StoryTelling cards are used throughout the workshop as aspirational and motivational pointers.

Mapping the Ecology: encourages each group to get to grips with the challenge by using the Sense of Belonging toolkit, -designed to establish key players, identify relationships, and easily examine multiple points of view.

5 Minutes: presented by Tessy Britton (Social Spaces and Thriving Too amongst other projects)

Inspiration Vault: free capturing of the group's collective inspiration examples coming from their individual multi-disciplinary professional experiences.


- Lunch -


Of Superheros: returning to the StoryTelling work-cards to discuss challenges and dream up superheros and superpowers.

Braving the blank page: working together with pens, pencils and sheets of paper, the group begins the search for solutions. This session is divided into two facilitated exercises, the collection of ideas regardless of their percieved relevance, and the combination and extension of ideas.

Design Thinking: clarification and evaluation of the groups collected ideas base, exploring the balance between practical functionality and emotional appeal using Narrative Ecology's FVD (feasibility, viability and desirability) and NWD (needs, wants and desires) scenario-building sheets.


- Networking and Refreshment Break -


Idea Synthesis: After-tea session starts off with a lively group debate, voting on the top 3 promising ideas.

Elevator Pitch: each group prepares a 3 minute Top 3 presentation that will be addressed to the workshop participants as a whole, ensuring shared knowledge across all participants, and opening the ideas to a greater audience for voting, one solution for each group will be chosen to take forward.

Questorming: this technique involves brainstorming the questions around the solution, because at the this stage there are often more questions than answers. The questions will form the framework for constructing future action.

Interactions: developed by NearLabs in partnership with NearInteraction, these cards are an exhaustive set of diagrams of up-to-date interactive technologies, exploring and de-mystifying concepts as varied as social media intergration to smartphone and tablet applications to tangible and gestural solutions. These solution provokers are guaranteed to entice you into talking big and thinking bigger about services that can make a practical difference when talking people to people interactions, matching people with a platform to connect and interact.


- Networking and Refreshment Break -


Wild Card: The StoryTelling work-cards are re-engaged, throwing each group an unexpected curve ball!


3. Good Participation: making it happen

Good Participation: a session intergrating the group's solution with the Good Participation flash set, an essential collection of valuable good participation touchpoints, this flash set creates a jumpstart platform for the analysis and establishment of effective solutions for participation.

Presentations: the workshop will be concluded with a 5 minute presentation from each group in the form of a narrative to the workshop participants as a whole, explaining the group's final solution to the Urban Apps Challenge.

- Workshop Wind Down over drinks -