Workshop Planning

Today, we started the planning for the User Workshop which is happening next week, 25th Aug 2011. The User workshops are the most important part of the process here at Creation Center as this is the part where the all the ideas are born, either developed or dismissed.

The workshop is going to be two fold. We are chalking out a creative worksheet-a cultural probe, survey, or design thinking questionnaire, that we can send out to the users before they come in on Thursday morning. This will be recorded by each in their homes, in their own time and space. This will prove as the starting point for further discussions and debates and idea generation at the workshop. Also, these cultural probes help understand and observe daily lives and preferences.

A few suggestions for this worksheet are:

• To give the users each 5 eEtiquette guidelines and ask them to interpret them and teach them in five different ways, taking inspiration from daily life and how they were taught/how they teach their children/what way they thinks works the best.
• To give the users 5 categories from the insights we derived earlier, for eg. provoke and retaliate, question, reverse psychology, etc as methods of teaching manners. Ask them to think of creative ways using these techniques.
• Maybe give the users 3 already existing ways of teaching manners(as identified by us as insights) and ask them to think on similar lines to come up with 2 new ones. Then take these 5 methods and mix and match with the guidelines to see which can compliment the other to be able to teach someone efficiently. And explain how.
• Send the users a different app each and ask them to experience it and reflect upon it. List out what they liked/hated/loved/were indifferent to.
• Ask the users to name their ten favourite apps, maybe sketch it out. Explain what they like/dislike about it. What emotions do they instigate. Identify icons that excites them?
• Name possible features, functions, design attributes and ask the users to organise these in ways that makes sense to them.(we need to think of making these a little more interesting/fun by adding graphics or themes that they can relate to)
• Ask the users to design an app that teaches a particular digital etiquette and at the workshop, exchange it among the users and ask them to perform the new app, narrate and describe their experience with the new app aloud.

To come up with the above suggestions, I went through the Ideo method cards, which are always super useful, specifically the "Ask" category, more or less designed for this stage.

Steven and I went through the well mannered services to filter them, and categorise them so they make more sense. These may/may not be used in the real app but are always helpful to suggest more ideas and give us some direction. The sorting out took a little longer than we expected as they did not all belong to a specific category and we're still at it, after all there are 24 of 124 of them!

And not to forget, today was Monday lunch, which is a special lunch at Creation Center. Every monday a new person cooks food for everyone else. He or she becomes the head chef and everyone helps to get the lunch ready! Today was Ashis and my turn. So we cooked some Rice, Dal, Aalu bhaja(bengali style), Chicken curry and Raita! I've never cooked for anyone, hardly ever my own self, let alone 9 other people! But it was a great experience, I sincerely hope for others too!