what they don’tteach you inclassrooms!

the BGU Open ApartmentsProgramDesign Thinking Workshop, September 2011

themakersandshakers

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maayan ar

biv

lior bou

zgan

adi cohen

nilu pau

chman

sara tal kalmanmatanya gill

keren

robbins

Maayan Arbiv, Nuclear EngineeringLior Bouzgan, Materials EngineeringAdi Cohen, Education Matanya Gill, Middle East StudiesSara Tal Kalman, Emergency MedicineNilu Pauchman, Biotechnology EngineeringKeren Robbins, Geological and Environmental Sciences

getting the process started

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Ben-Gurion University runs a diverse range of programs from its Community Action Unit. One program supportsstudents given housing in the poorer communities of BeerSheva and in exchange they have to spend 8 hours/weekon social activities inside their community. They call it the“Open Apartments Program”.

Our team: 3 people from university staff, 7 makers andshakers – students – who are involved in the open apartments program, and us.

Our goal: To co-create a storyboard during a design thin-king workshop for a video on the open apartments pro-gram and to produce video footage. The core message ofthe video: “Community involvement teaches you whatthey don’t teach in classrooms!”

the background:

ANALYZE

DEFINE

IDEATE

WE used one of the oldest “design thinking processes” described in “The Universal Traveler” from 1973. WE adapted this process to our needs by changing the “implementation” into the “prototyping” phase to emphasize experiment and hands-on.

SELECT

PROTOTYPE

EVALUATE

designthinking

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PHASE 1: ANALYZEThe 1st phase is often skipped and people rush to the“more creative” phases of ideation and prototyping. But asEinstein said: “If I only had an hour to solve a problem andmy life would depend on it, I’d devote the first 55 minutes to figuring out the right question to answer.” That’s whatWE did in our workshop. We were trying to achieve a common understanding of the “Open Apartments Program”by asking the following questions:

• How is the program embedded in the university?• How is it supported by the university?• What motivates the students to take part in the program?

• What are the benefits for the students? For the university? For the community?

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“Community involvement teaches you whatthey don’t teach in classrooms! The university of life is out there!”

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PHASE 2: DEFINEOur define process started with the central assumption:“Social skills are as important as academic skills to becomea ‘complete’ human being.” For 1.5 days WE were workingin multiple feedback loops breaking this assumption downinto an easy to understand key message. Shifting between small working groups and all participantsWE defined and decided upon the video’s core message:“Community involvement teaches you what they don’t teach in classrooms! The university of life is out there!” This message became the guideline for all our further activities.

work in progress

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PHASE 3: IDEATEThis phase was all about creating a pool of fresh and surprising ideas. Each and every idea was welcome! WE asked for ‘unlimited’ imagination. Our goal: transformthe text based core message into lively picts, sounds and audio. At this point everybody became excited. Finally all the students’ ideas were unleashed:

• What would the intro look like?• Whom to shoot?• Which neighborhoods to show?• Which music to use?• Which slogans to integrate?• Which wording to include?

Each single picture, audio, text should transfer the video’s core message.

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PHASE 4: SELECTNext step: select the best ideas and create a storyboard out of them. To visualize the storyboard we provided a timeline including3 different layers: written text, picture andaudio (spoken word / music / sounds). Thestudents developed in 2 teams the very firstdrafts. All together – wisdom of the crowd – WEdecided which draft to go on and optimized it.At the end of the day we had a complete story-board laid out in 3 layers (written text, pictureand audio). This marked also a milestonewithin the process: the students imagining forthe very first time how the video might look.

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PHASE 5: PROTOTYPEPrototyping in our case meant preparing and going out to film. Day 3: None of the students had ever doneanything like this before. But they scouted the locations,organized the equipment and found other students to get involved. They rehearsed professors and students in their classrooms over and over again until the scene was to their satisfaction. Two of them even took the camerahome and filmed their adopted Arab family while cookingand eating.

in theeditors’

suite

PHASE 6: EVALUATEIt turned out, WE all had done a great job during our workshop!It was easy to follow our script andthe storyboard.There were only a few confusing moments.

What the evaluation made obvious, text and audio were our weak points – but still on a pretty high level ;-)

... the film

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http://youtu.be/US2EVdbUsis

Ulrike Reinhard Faehrweg 2 69239 Neckarhausen +49 6229 93 07 06we@we-magazine.netwe-magazine.net