Sessions

Our sessions are an analog space to present, discuss and work collectively on social challenges. They are open to anyone who has an interest in the proposed topic. We provide a structure through which participants share inspiration and collaborate in order to develop conceptual solutions. It is an open-design process dedicated to enhance citizens’ ability to take an active role in shaping their environment.

The entire session lasts three hours and is designed in advance in such a way that it comprises all the elements of a professional design thinking session – analysis, brainstorming, ideation, concept development, design, prototyping, presentation and feedback. It is facilitated by a team of professional designers and researchers, who coordinate the tasks but refrain to intervene in them, so that the outcome really is the original result from non-experts working to better their own environment.

Steps of an Enable Session

A documentation is compiled at the end of every session, that includes both the final projects and all valuable statements, discussions and prototypes. This serves as grounds for future development, and unless stated otherwise is accessible to all on our website under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA), so that everybody can benefit and build upon the knowledge generated. We actively support entrepreneurs to develop the concepts further as social business start-ups. At the same time, we present the outputs to local governments and related organisations ,so that citizen’s voices can be heard and taken into consideration.

Through the sessions we  explore new ways of collaborating, sharing skills and knowledge, and take it all the way towards designing potential products and services. We believe this benefits both the participants and our commissioners.

Unsere Sessions finden unter realen Bedingungen statt, um soziale Aspekte und Auswirkungen von kommerziellen wie nichtkommerziellen Herausforderungen zu formulieren, zu diskutieren und gemeinsam nach Lösungen zu suchen. Jeder, der sich für ein Sessionthema interessiert, ist herzlich dazu eingeladen.
Wir bieten kreative Prozesse und Räume, in denen Inspiration und Zusammenarbeit in konzeptionelle Lösungen für genau jene Herausforderungen münden, denen wir uns als Gesellschaft gegenüber sehen.
Wir sind überzeugt davon, dass wir gerade mit Offenheit und Gemeinsamkeit passende Lösungen für alle Fragestellungen erarbeiten können. Unser Ziel ist es, alle Bürger darin zu ermutigen, eine aktive Rolle bei der Gestaltung der Stadt und ihrer Infrastruktur zu übernehmen.
Die Ergebnisse jeder Session* teilen wir unter den Bedingungen der CC license (CC BY-NC-SA), so dass wirklich jeder daran teilhaben und auf die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse individuell aufbauen kann. Gerne unterstützen wir auch Unternehmer aktiv dabei, diese Konzepte zu übernehmen und sie als Social-Business-Startup entsprechend weiter zu entwickeln. Gleichzeitig geben wir alle Arbeitsergebnisse an öffentliche Verwaltungen und andere Körperschaften weiter, die im Bereich Stadtentwicklung arbeiten. So stellen wir sicher, dass die Belange der Bürger wahrgenommen und mit in die Entscheidungsprozesse aufgenommen werden.
Während der Sessions erkunden wir neue Formen der Zusammenarbeit, indem wir Kompetenzen Wissen und Ideen interdisziplinär miteinander teilen. Wir sind überzeugt, dass davon alle Teilnehmer als auch jene Unternehmen profitieren, die unsere Sessions buchen.

PAST SESSIONS


SESSION XI / Visions on Mobility


(Link to blog post)

SESSION X / Designing Public Space



(Link to blog post)

SESSION IX /  Kinderrechte dürfen kein Fremdwort sein! / Children’s rights shouldn’t be a foreign word!


This was an issue we really wanted to test the power of collective thinking on. An issue where a viral campaign and marketingcan actually help to raise living standards for children around the world.

image-0

“Fremdwort/Foreign word!” Campaign concept by HIRO42 for a Unicef/Jovoto contest.

The goal of this session was to help Unicef spreading the word, and further developing their Fremdwort/Foreign Word” campaign
– How might we raise awareness about children’s rights?
– How might we invite people to take action? (As many as possible)

We had two challenges:
– Finding key words and descriptive headlines that have the potential to spread virally and stay in people’s minds.
– Developing a campaign to effectively distribute the message to as many people as possible.

We did not want people to just read a slogan. The challenge was to create a spark in their mind: the urge to do something, to take action! It is in our hands to change the situation for the better.

Nov 17, 2010 / SESSION VIII / Life Edited / Designing Future Housing


What are our houses going to look like in the future?

What do we need to re-design (or invent) in order live in a more sustainable way?
How do we create environments that are great to live in without producing waste?

House like a tree, by William McDonough

We wanted to apply collective wisdom and action to the design of environmentally friendly living spaces. Jovoto’s Life Edited contest, submitted by Treehugger founder Graham Hill, was a great opportunity to explore future off-the-grid housing within a context. Based on the brief, the session focused on designing the interior of a small apartment – using both space and latest technologies in a clever way in order to considerably reduce our environmental impact while preserving an uncomplicated, enjoyable life.

We invited 25 people from different fields to tackle this challenge. The concepts generated were posted online for our audience to develop further, or inspiration people while designing their future houses.

And there you go, a short documentary about our working process:

and a presentation of the results:

The session was split in two main parts:
– Gathering insights: What would you expect/want from future -more environmentally friendly- houses.
– Generating concepts: Designing a house that while taking inconsideration expressed human needs (gathered before) solve everyday situations in a clever way.

We hope the video is somehow useful, and we welcome your contributions/feedback!! Thanks to everybody who attended the session!!

Nov 3, 2010 / SESSION VII / A VISUAL SEARCH


Imagine a way to easily map and search for curious spots in your city based on any interest or information…

Imagine instant updates, past, present and future events portrayed visually…
Imagine new ways to link and compare different perspectives of the city…

For this session we interested ourselves in creating new dynamic ways of visualising our city – a user-generated online map, that can be added to and searchable by time, space, and participants.
Visualization from the book City Crawlers by Your Neighbours

We gathered people who knew of, or were already working on similar mapping projects. Our goal was to open up the discussion on online mapping and see whether we can work together more creatively and effectively to  really utilize the potential of open source, interactive and user-generated mapping.
The key questions we wanted to work on are:
How can we engage people in online mapping, visual searchs and mash-ups?
How can we cross-reference and share information and resources between different types of map-based projects?

We addressed those questions by building an overview of projects that are curently existing or that are in development; questioning why people want to make, use or customise maps; and discussing some of the struggles or successes which these types of projects experience.
There was also a creative and fun hands-on collaborative mapping challenge, after which we opened up the discussion to find out ways to support or connect existing projects, and the possiblities in giving and gathering information through new visualisations of our city.

And here is our documented process:

video uploading

Oct 6, 2010 / SESSION VI / What do YOU want to buy / PayPal


The competition, posted in Jovoto, was to“Help Paypal communicate in a concise and convincing way what PayPal is and how it can benefit its users”

We presented the brief during the session, and worked on it with a panel of ten creatives. From this, we put together a few breathtaking concepts, which we translated into a nicely presented proposal and posted it in Jovoto to see how the rest of the community and PayPal like it.

And we are proud to announce that one of our outcomes has been a winner project after entering the competition.

We got to some amazing concepts, not only to promote PayPal but to build on the things that make PayPal helpful for society. Ie, helping small start-up companies setting out payment systems without the complications of a bank, as well as donation systems for welfare organizations.

We think that if we want to help somebody promoting its business, we also want that our work has a positive impact in society.  You can see some of our concepts:
– Concept 1: It is also easy, fast and secure to donate
– Concept 2: What do you want to buy? And donate to?

With both of our proposals we try to explain PayPal by relating it with cash. Using this analogy we believe people would much easier understand what they can do with PayPal. We are also trying to start the conversation with its users.

Here is the video documenting our process:

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  • We are always looking for new challenges;

    If you have a challenge where collective thinking & participatory design could help, let us know! We are happy to design new sessions with you.

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