Dennis Schleicher
April 8 9:00AM
Innovation is rarely something that can be undertaken in isolation from the
chaos of an organization's day to day operations. Most of us aren’t on
specialized teams and we can’t innovate in isolation from the chaos of our
daily work. It’s tough just trying to find people to innovate with. We
don’t have special places to innovate and more importantly, we never seem to
have the time. Innovation seems like a luxury that no one can afford.
It’s time to challenge some of the current myths of innovation: that it is
always expensive, time consuming and requires deep specialization and skills.
Innovation is something that anyone can do, as long as they’re willing to
practice.
The Innovation Parkour Field Lab is a chance for individuals to learn the
basics of practicing innovation as a team discipline. The session leaders
will introduce attendees to the framework, its historical foundations and
practical elements. Then it’s all about learning through co-creation as
attendees work in teams to practice the core skills of Innovation Parkour in a
live-fire exercise. Let loose in a dynamic game-like environment, teams will
navigate a range of challenging constraints and then regroup to critique what
they’ve learned to help collaboratively design the next iteration of the
innovation parkour practice. Part learning exercise and part design activity,
the session will build off of previous successful field labs and exercises
conducted over the last year.
At the end of the day participants will have an evolved view of what innovation
looks like, how it works and most importantly what it feels like. They will
also have the capability to start start teaching Innovation Parkour to their
peers and contribute to the future of the framework.
April 9 1:45PM
This will be an activity in which we learn about and then do a bodystorming
exercise. A bodystorm is a live presentation (think: a short play) in which
user experience people improvise several scenes and also has the audience
asking questions. It leads to a better understanding of the problem and
solution space. I will go over best practices as well as techniques and tools
for bodystorming (one for idea generation to prepare for bodystorming and
another for analyzing a bodystorm.)
Use Case Theater (Prototyping the Space/Place your product will be used in
using “actors” and “props”.) Let’s say you have been hired to build a
new hot-dog vendor stand. Bodystorming Type III says you should get a perhaps 3
or 4 of your co-workers and have them act-out the the different roles. So you
have one person be the vendor. Another person ordering their hot dog. The other
people waiting in line to order. Perhaps you have them run through it for a
couple of takes and you can watch and see what happens and perhaps change
things up to explore different options. Such things as how long it take to
service 10 people with one vendor versus two vendors, or if you add a form for
people to fill out instead of telling the vendor their order.