The success of complex projects does not simply rely on ideas with potential for success. Equally important are the people involved – the stakeholders. The workshop focuses on strategies, small hacks and tools that help to manage the difficult world of people with various interests, relationships and emotions. 

In the workshop we will discuss different approaches of how to handle different stakeholder situations and experiment with different tools to manage stakeholders.

In coaching, coaches are usually getting quicker to the core of the personality if a personality assessment is applied at the beginning of the coaching process. A personality profile helps to recognize and better understand recurring patterns of behavior. What serves as a sound basis for coaching can also be an excellent basis for developing personas in design thinking. The more authentic personas are described in their personality structure, the better the behavioral prognosis – and the more successful the innovations and offerings.

Participants of the workshop will get to know the model of 16 life motives and become familiar with personality profiles. 16 life motives are personality characteristics that determine the thinking, feeling and acting of humans. The model can be used to realistically create fictional persons and can be easily integrated into the design thinking practice.

Workshop description coming soon …

Usability tests, surveys, card sorting, focus groups, or shadowing… If you work in product and user research is still uncharted territory to you, you should come and join our safari! 

To many, user research can appear like a scary deep forest. But step by step, we will walk you through the most important decisions to make and help you overcome guesswork when building products and services. Which method is the best to answer your questions? When is it worth to walk the extra mile? 

After we have learned how to pick the right method from the right tree, we will cook up a research plan and look into the crafting interview guides and asking the right questions.

How do we contain a “blabbermouth”? How can we win the trust of the “close-lipped” user type? And what special measures do we need to take with more “challenging” populations like children, the elderly or disabled people? The answers for that often involve challenges in recruiting and methodological limitations.

Goal of the workshop is a better understanding of the steps to take and measures to prepare before your next trip to the research jungle

The 2 hour workshop will be a very condensed version of the original full day format. We split the participants into 2 groups with 1 facilitator each.

The focus will be on the actual methods and tools within the Spectrum process rather than on actual results. The participants will be led through the entire process with all of its parts. However, we will prepare certain results along the way which help to understand the Spectrum journey and speed it up at the same time.

The simulation lets players experience work in Scrum sprints and brings to discussion many questions and topics that happen in real life while working in a Scrum team. This experience facilitates learning and makes participants prepared for the real use of Scrum.“I’m the author and here is the web-site about my simulation https://scrumcardgame.com/

Manchmal muss die UX einer Anwendung eben wie eine mitreißende Geschichte sein: Betrachten wir den Benutzer als den aufstrebenden Helden eines brillianten Blockbusters. Stellen wir uns vor, wie er unter Verwendung unserer Anwendung eine epische Reise und einen meisterhaften Spannungsbogen erlebt. Lassen wir ihn einen glorreichen Sieg erringen und belohnen ihn mit einer nachhaltigen Lösung seines Problems.

Etablierte Regeln aus dem Bereich Storytelling sollten bei der Gestaltung interaktiver Anwendungen ebenfalls beachtet werden. Der Intro-Vortrag gewährt zunächst theoretische Einblicke, inwiefern durch Storytelling-Elemente tragfähige Beziehungen zwischen Mensch und Produkt gestaltet werden können. Im praktischen Teil versetzen wir den Benutzer durch den gezielten Einsatz von Erzählpraktiken zur zentralen Figur einer Geschichte, damit er eine heldenhafte Entwicklung durchläuft.“

Design Thinking teaches us to „defer judgement”! That’s easier said than done since the human brain constantly judges our perceptions. So how do we train our brains to change from „judgement” to „movement”?

In this workshop we will shortly discuss some theory of creativity and talk about basic functions of the human brain. What has creativity in common with humor? Later on we will dive into some lateral thinking techniques as introduced by Edward De Bono, leading authority in the field of creative thinking. In hands-on activities we will practice random inputs, provocations and filament techniques. These techniques can be used to produce new ideas in group ideation sessions but also to tease our brains when we sit alone and wait for inspiration!

Workshop description coming soon…

This workshop is all about the big picture of innovation and implementation in digital projects. We take a playful look (think boardgame and cards) at the tools that help us master the job. From idea phase to customer feedback, requirements engineering, stakeholder interests, agile project management and even a touch of team coaching. Based on experiences from real world projects, we put the tools in a meaningful order and, for a bit of extra fun, elegantly react to unexpected events.

In this workshop participants will be able to learn and apply 8 different strategies for ideas generation and action planning based on Customer Journey Map. Workshop design assumes that participants will have general understanding of CJM as tool or some experience building CJM before. 

The ability to focus and be effective has never been harder. We lose 50-70% of our time at work. Work is often a source of stress. We often end the day tired, or with an over active mind.



But what if we have been working the wrong way? 

Flow is our optimal state of deep-focus and wellbeing, in which our brain performs 2x to 5x better than ordinarily, according to McKinsey research.
 

How do we enter Flowstates at work – and experience this sense of effortless productivity, fluidity and creativity? 
How do we produce our best work systematically?  
How do we overcome overload, procrastination, pressure? 
How do we create more energizing workdays, everyday? 


In this workshop you will learn about a unique new paradigm to enter Flowstates at work. 
You will also practice deepening your sense of purpose.
The workshops will be punctuated with some energizing breaks

The world is an increasingly chaotic, messy and complex place. As the climate crisis looms above our heads, technologic dystopias run amok in our minds. For design and designers, this is an opportunity that quite literally can’t be missed. By embracing complexity through new materials such as futures, systems thinking, organizational design and developing capabilities we can have the impact the world needs right now. 

In this talk, I will talk about stories, rituals and anticipatory systems that make this possible. I believe we’re yet to unleash the true vision of the internet but in order to do so, the inevitability of technology requires a counterforce that is design – understanding humans, responsible experimentation and ethics all boiled into one. I will share tools and ideas we use such as the Actionable Futures Toolkit that will get you started on aligning and rallying a group of human beings around a unified cause — and a purpose. 

When’s the last time you saw some quirky looking furniture and people called it a designer piece? Or an impractical piece of kitchenware? An uncomfortable couch? Oftentimes, the general public has no perception of what the job of design actually is. That’s unfortunate, but OK. What’s worse is that many in our own industry don’t understand what their core job is. Overly specific job titles and niche tasks are only amplifying that problem. No matter what kind of designer you are, the relevant approach and core skill set should always be the same. It’s just the mastery of a domain, a set of techniques and constraints, that differ. That core skill is communication. Sure, there are many other aspects that are relevant in design. Design should sell. Design should beautify. But above all, design is the intentional transfer of a message, through a certain medium, to a specified audience. Knowing this, and the basics of communication theory, is key to good design. It’s the foundation of what we know as human centered design. If it’s not clear what you’re trying to say you’re just making art.

Let’s look at the premise of communication for design and what this means for your day-to-day as a designer. We’ll explore how you can use this knowledge to your advantage throughout various stages of the design process. A simple framework is all you need to set your designs up for success.

Research is hard! It’s a big challenge to find the right balance between cost, time and depth of knowledge that will lead you and your team to a successful outcome and that’s keeps all your stakeholders happy. I will  explore different tools, workspaces, and processes that help bring some order to ethnographical research. Using technology to cut through the mundane tasks and focus on the important things. You will partake in hands on learning by working through a case study example and building a digital cultural probe.

The main concept is that all of our learned lessons, best practices, and designed processes can teach us a lot about how to deliver a well understood concept, but there are two problems with that.

For one, we rely on that concept to simply appear spontaneously in our imaginations. Well, okay, it happens sometimes and anyway there’s no shortage of ideas, right? But we believe that there is much to be said for the nature of an idea we want to pursue and how we can generate them reliably instead of waiting around for inspiration. Creativity has a methodology.

What qualifies an idea as mature enough for it to graduate to development? How can we critically examine ideas at their earliest stages? How can we seed a core concept and facilitate its maturation? The best of new ideas are often the most challenging to understand so how should they be articulated within a team or company? These are the kinds of questions we’ve attempted to answer and we’ve put our answers to action in procedures that structure the creative process such that even the least creative person can get results.

In fact, we do not believe in „uncreative people.“ We believe creativity is learned and can be taught. None of us are more naturally creative than we are naturally able to ride a bike.

One of the principles of creativity is that it occurs when we connect seemingly disparate ideas. Indeed, that is how I came up with the Creative Sprint. Our approach is based on well understood principles from fields as far apart as psychology, linguistics, Artificial Creativity, film theory, and improv comedy. We expect the procedure to most valuable in large companies where resources can easily go to an understood concept, but genuine innovation is often hard to come by.

Business Model Innovation meets Strategic Design: Learn how to create value-centered businesses starting with value-audits, the analysis of dominant value logics up to the development and management of value-centered strategies. In this workshop, we introduce a framework that makes Value Propositions tangible & quantifiable in order to create value-based strategies.

The approach takes Bains’ “Elements of Value” Framework, integrates it with the Business Model & Value Proposition Canvas and then applies strategic approaches like “Blue Ocean Strategy” or Porter’s „Generic Strategies”. From self-assessment over competitor analysis to strategy and decision making – This framework helps to level up your value proposition game.

Keynote details coming soon…

Talk details coming soon…

As digital designers, we are constantly being told that we have the power to change the world. We tend to see ourselves as creative problem solvers with a plethora of tools and methods to disrupt and innovate. 

And we like to repeat these mantras to ourselves in our bubble of tech meet-ups, design conferences or self-centred rants on Social Media. 

But how many of us actually use our alleged creative powers and tools for something more than making rich companies richer, selling more stuff online or solving some other first world problem? 

Could it be that we are actually creating more problems than we are solving for a majority of people that are not as digitally enabled or privileged as us? 

In his role as a self-hating, humanist hipster, Clive will discuss: 

– Ethical considerations everyone in tech should think about 

– Ways to use our design powers for social impact 

– Learnings from his own efforts to win some karma points 

– Why now is the best time to move (back) from hipster-centric to human-centered design