Getting into facilitation & improvisation with Belina Raffy
As service designers, how can we engage people effectively in creative parts of the design process? How can we make our approach highly productive, enjoyable, and able to allow for fresh insights? In this highly interactive, two-day course held by Belina Raffy, we will explore key facilitation approaches, tools, activities, and techniques coming from applied improvisation, which are now globally used to support Service Design processes from the research phase through to the co-design of service solutions.
The two days are divided into learn & try (day 1) and do & reflect (day 2). Students will firstly explore key concepts of applied improvisation and useful applications. The “core capabilities of improvisation” model by Robert Poynton will be introduced, and we will explore what makes a powerful co-creation/innovation experience. Students will also experience multiple activities which support co-creation and innovation, as well as a core activity “one-word stories”, and an “evil, good, amazing” brainstorm. We will have facilitation tips on how to introduce and debrief activities well. After that, we will have a “fishbowl” experience where some students will deliver an activity, and we will all support and learn. The second day will be about reflections on the previous one. A few new creativity activities will be introduced, including Thiagi’s “Hello”. We will explore Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s flow model in relation to creative session design. The teams will facilitate their design and receive feedback. We will have course reflections and explore the next steps.
Thanks to Belina’s module, students will have knowledge of some powerful methods and tools for facilitating in-person creative sessions, and how these relate to the service design practice. They’ll have an understanding of useful ways to design creative sessions thanks to examples of how these methods and tools have been/can be used. At the end of the two days, they will be able to apply the learning to their own creative sessions.
