# data[].attributes.body
Hey! We're Nora and Poojitha, post-graduate students from the Culture and Enterprise department in CSM.

Together we're working on creating opportunities and spaces for collaboration in the university context.

# data[].attributes.body
As Master's students, we came expecting a forum or space encouraging cross-pollination across courses and departments at UAL.

However, the university offered very little space for community-based learning ecosystems.

Hence we've come together out of a shared experience of the absence of spaces to meet people and collaborate at CSM.

This padlet is a reflection of our experiences and an invitation to learn about other students' experiences and stories.

# data[].attributes.body
Isolation is a form of siloization: community-building is a way to create transdisciplinary exchange leading to deeper and more nuanced engagement

Opportunity for inclusivity for students from a variety of backgrounds

Connecting with others facilitates components of the social theory of learning: learning as belonging, becoming, experiencing, and doing

Moving beyond the mindset of an individual learning journey

# data[].attributes.body
Communication through intercultural lenses: a series of sessions hosted by Adam Ramejkis for students in the Culture and Enterprise department exploring themes related to culture, communication and collaboration.

# data[].attributes.body
Coming from one of the best design schools, the curriculum was designed to facilitate collaboration across courses and disciplines. One was able to interact and work with someone else from another course, as the curriculum accounted for it through a 1 month interim semester and many more similar opportunities.

This possibility of working with different disciplines broadened one's horizons and gave us a chance to learn from different approaches of different discipline. In someways it created a practice space similar to that of the industry.

On enrolling for my Master's I was excited at be able to access the community and network with people in UAL. It was something that I was eagerly looking forward to.

However, my experience was slightly different from how I would have wanted it to be. Collaboration was encouraged, but on a course level only. Beyond the course, there were very few opportunities for people to interact for work or socialize.

There seem to be no bridges connecting the courses, departments or colleges, just gaps.

# data[].attributes.headline
What are your experiences with collaborating within and outside the course? (what do you have?) 

# data[].attributes.subject
What are your experiences with collaborating within and outside the course? (what do you have?) 

# data[].attributes.headline
What are your expectations regarding collaboration within and without your course? (what do you want?)

# data[].attributes.subject
What are your expectations regarding collaboration within and without your course? (what do you want?)

# data[].attributes.body
Coming from fine art and fashion career in New York and Los Angeles, most recently founding and running a transdisciplinary hybrid retail, community, and event business, I'm passionate about creating spaces for people to connect. The business was partly a response to how separate creative disciplines are in practice and offered opportunities for collaboration and exchange.

Arriving for a MA in Applied Imagination at CSM, I was excited to be coming to a school that offered forward-thinking, multi-disciplinary courses. I was also excited to keep engaging with creatives in different courses around CSM and UAL!

The reality of the university was that I found barriers in every direction. There is a lack of access to other students or courses or departments. There is a lack of spaces for interactions, networks for student-to-student communication, and community building.

Every other student I have communicated with is similarly dismayed by the silos and lack of avenues for interaction and collaboration.

# data[].attributes.body
Browse through during the break

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Designing Collaboration | How to structure, design and understand collaboration

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Collaborations vary enourmously depending on their goals, settings, teams and resources. Yet all collaborations are a human activity, and the following six elements play an imporant role in all of them. These elements also play an important role in the questions of the interactive structure tool.

Motivation

The driving force for collaboration is motivation. In order for a collaboration to succeed, everyone involved needs to feel that they gain something from the collaboration or feel that they are doing a meaningful thing and working towards a valuable end result.

Communication

In order to find the right people to collaborate with, the project needs to be communicated clearly. Giving information about the project and its goals helps people decide whether to participate or not.

Diversity

Collaboration benefits from a wide range of skills and expertise in the pool of participants. A diverse group of participants is often the best way to ensure that this is achieved.

Sharing

For a successful collaboration it is important to be flexible with the ownership of ideas. This does not mean that a team should not give credit to individuals where credit is due, but any issues of ownership of ideas or concepts need to be agreed at the onset.

Support

The support of the other collaborators in the process is important, especially at times of crisis or unforeseen difficulties. Even when no hardships are expected, the collaborative group needs to work on the basis of the trust that if someone were to need the support of others in the group, that support would be available.

Problem solving

The group must be able to solve problems together. High tolerance for uncertainty is needed when the project changes direction or something does not go as planned.

Design process

One of the many models for structuring the design process is Design Council's Double Diamond model. The model attempts to illustrate the changing scope of a project as it moves through the design process. The four stages, Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver form a framework for the designer to explore, test and innovate. The work can be multidisciplinary in all of the stages and involve team members from various professions. The different stages can feed back into each other.

2. Define

filtering and analysing the findings

brainstorming

visualisation

prototyping and testing

selecting ideas for development

4. Deliver

testing and refining

stakeholder approval / rejection

presenting or launching the product or looping back to an earlier stage

Collaboration Structure and Path

Collaboration adds complexity to a design project. A collaborative project can move through the design process in linear fashion, but the structure of the project may change from one stage to the next. One stage may call for a very open collaboration style to ensure motivation, while another stage may require a tigther control in order to meet the project deliverable. Therefore, a collaborative project can move through different modes of collaboration as it follows a design process, and this is best visualised in a quadrant.

The quadrant is based on the aspects of governance and the openness of the collaboration in the design process. Next we will look at these aspects in more detail.

Models of collaboration

Collaboration can be classified by its dimensions of openness and governance. In these the models of collaboration are open or closed, and flat or hierarchical. ( Pisano & Verganti)

Openness of the collaboration

Governance of the collaboration

Flat

all the participants can take part in the decision making process

all the participants share the challenges and make the decisions together

in order for the collaboration to succeed, all collaborators need to agree on the goals of the project

Hierarchical

a selected participant or organisation is in charge of the decision making

level of challenges and tasks of participants can be determined by the decision maker

participants can have their own goals within the hierarchy

The modes of collaboration in design projects

Combining the models offers different modes of structuring collaboration in the two dimensions: how open the collaboration is and how hierarchical it is.

Open & Hierarchical

Anyone can contribute but the person, company or organisation in charge of the project decides which ideas or solutions to develop.

Open & flat

There is not an authority who decides which innovations will be taken further because anyone can contribute in the process and use delivered results.

Closed & Hierarchical

The participants have been chosen by the authority who also decides which ideas will be chosen and developed.

Closed & Flat

The group of participants chosen by an authority share ideas and make the decisions and contributions together.

(more at Pisano & Verganti 2008)

About me and this research

This set of recommendations and the evaluative framework is the result of my final thesis for the MA Communication Design course at Central Saint Martins, London. A number of collaborative projects were studied for the research and the main ones, Rubbish Duck and TEDxCentralSaintMartins are treated in detail in my portfolio ( PDF download).

I am Essi Salonen, a designer interested in collaboration, engagement and motivation. Find my contact details below.

Case studies

The first TEDxCSM conference was held in March 2012. The event was organised to celebrate the new Central Saint Martins campus in King's Cross. Rubbish Duck is an environmental sculpture made out of plastic bottles collected from London's waterways. The project raises awareness of problems that rubbish causes in our waterways.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Designing Collaboration | How to structure, design and understand collaboration

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This work is based on research on combining the design process and collaboration structure, both important to the work of a designer Based on research of various collaborative projects, this site equips you with a theory and a practical structure for your own collaborations by combining these theories of collaboration models and the design process.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Skip to content

Nesta's collaborative executive development programme for innovation policymakers, the Global Innovation Policy Accelerator, is reaching an exciting period: three cohorts in three different parts of the world, each at different stages of the programme. They are all working towards designing testable innovation policy solutions to challenges they face in their respective countries or regions: India, South East Asia, and more recently Brazil.

It's a unique opportunity to reflect on some of the choices we have made in terms of programme design, and what it has meant in practice for our participants. In this blog we outline three key programme design approaches with examples from our cohorts.

1. Triple diamonds

What type of thinking is required in order to be successful when developing innovation policy? One could argue a spontaneous and free-flowing approach (divergent thinking) will result in fresh and innovative ideas. Conversely, a more grounded, analytical and deductive approach (convergent thinking) might be better.

It is increasingly being shown that such an opposition is unhelpful and that the two needn't be mutually exclusive. Indeed, policymakers need to be able to draw on different mindsets and approaches in order to be successful.

The approach on The Global Innovation Policy Accelerator is iterative, based on the premise that the best ideas are produced as a result of embracing both divergent and convergent thinking, but in a conscious way. Switching between the two needs to be done methodically; trying to do both at the same time can result in bad ideas.

The 'double diamond' process - benchmarked internationally by the Design Council - sees participants repeatedly 'opening up' and exploring a wide range of possibilities for their work; followed by phases of 'focusing in' and narrowing down their ideas and making decisions. For the Global Innovation Policy Accelerator, forming new teams to tackle policy challenges meant we felt a third 'diamond' was required. We considered the journey of our participants on the programme and their needs; the triple diamond structure being the result of this.

The first phase of the programme is called 'Dialogue'. Participants explore ways of working best together in their country teams, and spend time gaining insights into policy challenges they might want to address; however, no firm decisions are made until enough exploration has taken place. During the subsequent 'Diagnose' phase they focus on firming up the policy challenge they want to address, and finalising team roles; all based on the insights from the previous phase. Although the wider programme is structured in this way, even individual tasks are carefully designed to maximise both divergent and convergent thinking.

For example, earlier this year our India cohort met in teams to choose an innovation policy challenge to address in their respective departments. The process began in a divergent manner: they could come up with any challenges they thought were worthy of addressing in a silent ideation session. Soon, the facilitator asked them why it was worthy of addressing They would respond with more detail and reasoning. They were then asked why again... the reply developed further into something more elaborate and specific... why again.

Five times in total. The idea being that by asking 'why' in a successive structured way narrows down the scope to help get to the root of a problem. It's simple, but pushing for The Five Whys of questioning uncovers assumptions, deeper motivations, and helps crystallise the problem you are seeking to address.

Meanwhile, our South East Asia participants - further along the triple diamond - are choosing testable solutions to address their respective policy challenge. Once again, they were iterating between divergent and convergent thinking in a structured, conscious way.

Starting with a broad range of proposed solutions, these were promptly whittled down by applying three key criteria: was the solution pioneering? Was it practical? How about productive? Only those solutions that scored highly across all three became viable candidates worthy of pursuing, and converging on. Our PPP filter was adapted from 100%Open's, who we worked with to develop innovation tools tailored to the accelerator.

Whilst consciously choosing to converge or diverge at the right time is useful, our participants have also been encouraged to put end-users at the heart of their approach.

2. Human-centred design

When developing a policy it can be tempting to think you understand who the end beneficiary is. Of course, it is essential to think about who they are; their attitudes, political leanings; socioeconomic status; what keeps them up at night? Generating such personas can help uncover unmet needs, but it is a largely hypothetical exercise based on assumptions we make about others.

Policymakers often rely on intermediaries to understand who the beneficiaries are of their work, but this is of course different to actually talking to them. Indeed, human-centred design has been fairly slow to inform innovation policy making processes so far. On the accelerator we are supporting our teams to be more innovative in their policymaking, including adopting a human-centred approach. By immersing oneself in the stakeholder's journey there are insights that can be gained that the policy cycle simply won't provide.

This is why after creating user journeys and personas, teams on the Policy Accelerator approach stakeholders they've identified. They test their assumptions and build on the personas and journeys they initially imagined, populating and refining them with insights gained from first hand interactions.

For example, our Philippines team are developing an online portal for researchers and grant providers in the agricultural sector. To inform their approach, they recently delivered a personas/storyboarding workshop. They invited over 20 representatives from research institutions and funding agencies, to test whether the personas and journeys they created were accurate reflections of potential users. Key feedback included adding private sector personas and technology transfer officers.

Whether it's stakeholder interviews, surveys, or shadowing; teams choose approaches that are compatible with their political systems and structures. We've seen a movement towards this user-centred approach in government through initiatives such as Policy Lab.

Collecting the most useful insights also requires strategic questioning. For example, our participants use laddered questioning; where you start with broad, open questions and then methodically increase the specificity in a bid to get to the heart of an issue. We find such an approach - which chimes with the double-diamond approach - often results in the most honest and useful answers.

None of these approaches can be successful unless our teams are aware of their respective relative strengths during their public problem solving work. For this reason we place a major focus on nurturing the skills and attitudes necessary for successful public problem solving.

3. Nurturing skills and attitudes

Nesta - in collaboration with governments and other organisation - has defined the key skills, attitudes and behaviours that are necessary to successfully solve public problems. This has been done through a competency framework aimed at public sector innovators specifically. There are many ways such a framework can be used; to develop HR policy; for evaluation purposes; defining team roles; and much more.

One key way we've used it to is to better define programme objectives and the activities to achieve these. We want to ensure the programme presents an opportunity to develop the skills and attitudes defined by the framework.

For example, 'Prototyping and Iterating' is one of the key skills, which is why teams work towards testing a policy idea at the end of the programme. Policymakers also need to be able to articulate why their problem matters, and demonstrate the value of their solution; which is why there are are sessions focused on compelling storytelling.

Defining our learning objectives around these also means we can easier evaluate the progress of teams; match them more effectively to mentors depending on areas they need support in; and to support them in effectively defining team roles through regular team coaching support.

Next steps

As a team we are also embracing these approaches internally. Iterating continuously, shaping our programme to our participants' needs, and evaluating our own skills and attitudes ensures we can effectively support our participants. As the programme expands into Brazil and potentially other regions we look forward to sharing further insights.

Juan Casasbuenas

Juan Casasbuenas

Curriculum and Content Manager

Juan was a Curriculum and Content Manager supporting the Digital Frontrunners and Global Innovation Policy Accelerator programmes.

View profile

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Using design principles to foster innovation policy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How design principles shape our approach in the Global Innovation Policy Accelerator

# data[].attributes.body
something about flow?

# data[].attributes.body
possibilities of directions

# data[].attributes.headline
Flow and questions about ways forward - curating for blank space and becoming friends first

# data[].attributes.subject
Flow and questions about ways forward - curating for blank space and becoming friends first