The Water Game
Where does water come from?
A clean, constant supply of drinking water is essential to every community none the less water is something we all take for granted as a commodity in our part of the world.. When we turn on the tap, water comes out.
In a close collaboration with Grontjemij | Carl Bro, a leading sustainable design, engineering and management consultancy based in 20 countries, framework identity and Built Identity have developed an inspirational “game” called The Water Game. Target groups are water suppliers and the aim is to re-think the significance of water for the modern man. The Water Game raises questions that give inspiration, input and food for thought. It works as a dialogue tool that boards, management groups and employes at water can use in the process of developing the future strategy of their local waterwork.
The Water Game was presented at a recent fair organised by the Danish Water and Waste Water Association (DANVA), a national association of water and waste water utilities. Though scepticism was shown at the beginning several waterworks were curious about the game and its use it in their strategic work.
The theory and praxis behind Design Thinking
A two-day workshop at the Institute of Electronic Business in Berlin
Many definitions of Design Thinking can be found on the internet, for example:“Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result.” Thus sounds the definition on Wikipedia while Tim Brown from Design and Innovation Company IDEO defines it as: “Design thinking can be described as a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.” This gives us a hint of what Design Thinking means but what about the theory behind it, the practical methods and tools and how can you actively use it in your Businnes?
On Friday 25th and Saturday 26th Pia Betton will be co-facilitating a two day workshops at the Institute of Electronic Business in Berlin. Co-lecturers are Prof. Dr. Markus Peschl from Vienna University, DI Thomas Fundneider from theLivingCore (Vienna), Prof. Peter Friedrich Stephan who teaching Cognitive
Design at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and Prof. Dr. Thomas Schildhauer and Sebastian Schmidt from the Institute of Electronic Business.
Besides Design Thinking Radical Innovation, Cognitive Design and Social Media and Crowdsourcing is on the agenda. Methods like Enabling Spaces, Scope and Drill-down, Cultural Probes, Re-framing, Attitude – Practise – Knowledge, Blue Print Maps and People Studies will be presented, explained and used through practical excercises.The overall focus is to teach how design theory and praxis can be implemented and successfully used in innovation and change processes in organisations.
It’s no longer possible to sign up for the workshop but a follow-up will be conducted in October. For update on the seminar, please send your e-mail address to p.betton@framework-identity.com
Working with an NGO brand
Creating a shared brand understanding behind the Global Identity of Amnesty International
Regardless the service you offer or the business you operate in, a tangible identity and a strong brand is essential. It supports you in the process of building a sound and long-lasting relationship with your stakeholders and provides a solid basis for a successful business.
Compared to organisations in the private and public sector NGO’s face different challenges when working with brand building and marketing. Amnesty International launched a new brand and visual identity in 2009. For an NGO of that size a succesfull implementation of a unified global brand depends on the support from the individual sectors. They have to recognise the strength in acting as a global brand instead of isolated, local units.
As a part of the implementation phase of “Amnesty International’“s: http://www.amnesty.org/ new global brand we co-developed a two-day workshop in Berlin on March 10-11, facilitated by Pia Betton. Thirtyfive section managers participated and shared their experiences with implementing the new global brand.
As an introduction each section presented their individual communication material and their state of implementation. The section managers where then divided into groups to discuss opportunities and challenges with the first generation global identity, focusing on basic elements like colour scheme, typo, wording etc. Opportunities such as digital trends/social networking where discussed as well as the overall on-/offline presence.
Experiences, thoughts and ideas were discussed as well as challenges and opportunities for the further implementation. Each group had the task of coming up with three “must haves” (crucial elements) for the new global identity. The desired outcome was the development of a design brief for the next steps in the implementation. A guideline in the process of creating a shared brand understanding behind the Global Identity.
Innovation and education in Roskilde
For months now we have worked on an innovation process with with Roskilde, a Danish municipality, together with our partners Per Løkken and Build Identity. The aim of this process is to develop a strategy that guides Roskilde in the direction of becoming Europe’s leading, educational city in the year 2030.
As an important part of the process, we wanted “the silent voice” (the users) that are often overruled or ignored by “the known voice” (the professionals) to be heard. In this case, we defined the “silent voice” as being students from Roskilde’s different educational institutions. In many cases, the future work force and citizens of Roskilde. The userdriven innovation process is divided into three stages:
Stage one, Involvement
We invite the students (the users) to become co-developers and share thoughts, wishes and dreams and contribute ideas on the project.
Stage two, Idea- and concept development
The material we are left with form the basis for stage two where the people that normally work with strategy development in the municipality (“the known voice”) take part in transforming all the thoughts and inputs into concrete ideas and concepts. Again, students are invited into this process
Stage three, realisation
Development and realization of innovative concepts for the municipality.
The grand opening
Last Tuesday (November 24) was the highlight of stage one. A one day innovation work shop were we had invited seventy students from various schools and universities to participate in six different work shops. Furthermore employees from the municipality (the educational institutions, politicians etc.) were working together in a seventh workshop. The workshops were designed as an experience for many senses where the participants through play and creativity explored future lifestyles within 6 areas of everyday life and education.
For you Danish speaking readers you can follow this link to watch a small video. A feature by a regional tv station that stopped by on the innovation day.
Create the best on the basis of the worst
January 20 framework identity received “Business in Berlin”, a new network for Scandinavians doing business in Berlin.
After a presentation about tangibility – how to make corporate identities and processes attractive, easy to understand and tangible it was our guests turn to brainstorm: How do we create an interesting, attractive network?
We decided to try out negative brainstorming: Asked people to describe the worst network in the world, to describe an extreme scenario. Quite fun, actually, an far away from our normal Appreciative inquiry approach, where we always focus on what organisations what more of or new – not what they want to get away from.
In brainstorming and development it is a fun tool to think in scenarios, in extremes. After the negative brainstorming we did a positive brainstorming and found out, that you can’t just turn the negative scenario 180°, make it positive and thereby create the perfect scenario. The negative scenario becomes a platform for thinking new.
I’m sure this is also usefull in these finansial crisis times!
