Billboard Workshop example New School

The purpose of this article is to share some thoughts how I construct Billboard Design Thinking workshops and to share a full example with the thought process and considerations it takes to design the workshop. You can download the power point template in the Billboard Design Thinking LinkedIn Group for free

After a short introduction to the workshop goal I will walk you through the individual parts of the workshop and reason why I selected them, how they should be moderated and what results I expect from the workshop.

Finally I will share the template so you can download and modify it for your special needs and your school challenge. The template is not only for conceptualizing a new school but can also be used to challenge the status-quo and challenge your current way of working.

Thus this template can be used by teachers, principals or parents who want to spend a day envisioning and/or improving an existing school system with the sole purpose of bringing better education to students because the way they are taught will influence their entire life and can make all the difference to how our society will develop in the coming years.

 Workshop challenge and goal

This workshop was conceptualized for a good friend who is passionate about starting a new school on September 2020. His mission is to make an additional school form available for children who have trouble adapting to additional school systems where the structure and learning methods don’t match their special needs.

It’s also important to understand that this is not an initiative against existing schools or an implicit statement that all other schools are bad but an acknowledgement that and realization that many children are left behind because they have special needs and won’t be successful in a traditional school.

The ultimate goal of this project is to offer one more school form that targets a specific type of students that currently have no school form that fits their needs and give them a place where they can learn in a way that matches their needs rather than forcing those children to adapt to a rigid system they never will be able to be successful in.

Workshop Introduction – Workshop Goal

Goal: Align expectations with the workshop participants

Moderator task: Present the workshop goal and walk the poster

Participant task: Listen and ask if something is unclear

Tip: Don’t start deep discussions this is only an outline

 The workshop introduction highlights the five steps and is a short concise introduction what the workshop is all about.

1.      How does the new school look like?

2.      Why is the school so much better than any existing school?

3.      What preconditions need to be fulfilled so I’m 100% convinced

4.      If it is the best school in the world what is preventing us from doing it?

5.      Where do we want to be in 10 years? Is the concept scalable?

  My Perfect school is

Goal: The goal here is to first let participants think about how they would envision a perfect school before they share their thoughts to ensure all ideas are heard and every participant makes a personal commitment.

 Moderator task: Hand out sheets to participants and tell them they shall write down their description of how this new improved school should look like. They get max 10 minutes time and will present their solution and talk about it.

Participant task: Will think about how they would shape a new school and what is important to them. The idea here is that each individual participant shall share his/her dreams of what a new improved school could look like. This is about defining if this is a primary, secondary school, what size and location it has, how many students and teachers will be affected etc. This will mainly set the boundaries for the discussion but is part of the first exercise.

Moderator task: After everybody is finished the Moderator invites everyone to the poster to share his/her thoughts about what is important form their point of view and attach the form with his/her answers to the poster

 Tip: Give participants enough time to finalize their ideas if it takes a little longer than 10 minutes that is fine, don’t rush them. Summarize and feedback what you have heard on a high level to ensure everybody has a common understanding. Ask questions if it is not clear to you as moderator because then it will probably also not be clear for other participants as well.

 Added values for major stakeholders

Goal: This new school must bring value to all three major stakeholder groups: students, parents, and school personal. The question is what the value is and why shall all three groups want a new and improved school. To make the school a success all three stakeholder groups must see some benefit that outweighs the effort to change to a new system and abandon the current system they have. If one of the group sees no value then the project will most likely fail.

 Moderator task: Ask participants to think about what the benefit and added value is for students, parents and school personal in separate sessions and share their value proposition for each of the groups.

 Participant task: Each participant thinks about why and what the value for each of the three personas is and shares his/her thoughts in individual sessions.

 Tip: Work on the value proposition for the three user groups separately starting with the student as primary beneficiary then looking into the parents that must consent and opt into the new school form and finally the school personal that must join the school and also agree to take part in this new school form.

Stakeholder Mappings

Goal: Identify who are the stakeholders assigned to the individual user groups. Here a fourth stakeholder group is added, the authorities and partners which have a vested interest in the school and will participate or influence the school from various angels for example a school comissionar that might inspect the school or a public official that might be involved in getting a permission to open the school. For the other two groups: family and relatives as well as teachers and personal the task is to list all persons who might interact with a student and influence the behavior of the student in the ecosystem

Moderator: explains the concept and how the stakeholder mapping works and highlights that persons who have direct contact with the student are placed in the inner circle and persons who have indirect contact will be placed in the second circle. And finally persons who neither directly nor indirectly interact with the student but still influence the school are placed outside the circle. For example partners and sponsors might never meet any of the students and teachers but contribute to the schools success indirectly, thus they will be placed outside the circle.

Participants: Participants brain storm each group separately and share their findings and add all personas to the stakeholder map they can think of. The group agrees together which stakeholders are relevant and which are not and also agrees on if those stakeholders are connected directly or indirectly with the student.

Tip: start with family and relatives first. Work on teachers next and partners and sponsors last. Also prepare at least one example that is not obvious at a first glance for each of the groups and ensure the concept of direct and indirect interactions is clear to the participants.

 What are the fantastic ideas that will help students?

Goal: Brain storm what fantastic ideas the group has and rate them according to feasibility and effort. The idea here is to first find ideas and second think about how easy or hard they will be to implement. Almost impossible ideas could be anything from cultural not fitting to financial not barrable ideas. Or ideas that are great but where skills are missing might also be seen as almost impossible to tackle.

 Moderator task: Explains the two dimensions of the matrix: Feasibility and Effort and gives at least one example for the bottom left corner (No problem / small effort) and top right corner (Almost impossible / huge effort).

 Participant task: All participants write down as many ideas as they can think of in an alone session not talking and thinking about new features they envision for their school and share them one by one after all participants have written down all their ideas. During sharing all group members are ask to challenge the idea and ask if they don’t understand it. Placing the idea in the write quadrant is a joint effort and is negotiated with the group until a consensus is achieved.

 Tip: Start group ideas if they are similar but never remove duplicates. If you have duplicates just put them over each other to honor the work participants took to write the post-its.

What tasks need to be completed so our dream will become reality?

Goal: to make dreams come true you need a plan and here the idea is to look at the coming months until the winter semester starts and figure out what tasks shall be done in which sequence. This is like a small project plan or Kanban canvas where all tasks are listed and order according to when they need to be completed.

Moderator: the moderator explains that there will be three consecutive alone-together sessions where participants are asked to think of all tasks that are necessary to make the school open on September 1st and share those thoughts with the group. After completing one section (Q1, Q2, Q3) the moderator asks which are the most important tasks and places them on the bottom in the “Top 4 Tasks for Q1,Q2, Q3”. This is about focusing and making choices what is important and what shall be done first.

Participants: Have three rounds of alone together and list all tasks they think are important for each segment. After brainstorming they share their ideas by putting the post its up and always have a short discussion to ensure the entire group agrees where the task shall be placed. After nobody has any task to add the moderator asks which are the top four. This can be done by voting or discussion.

Tip: If participants can’t agree if a task shall be place in Q1, Q2 or Q3 put it in a parking lot and come back to those tasks after you complete all three sections. After filling in all three sections it will be easier to agree on where the task shall be place. If there is realy no agreement put it on the boarde between two sections. If the task is a repetitive task duplicate the task and add the task to several sections.

Pitching your ideas to an investor

Goal: after spending one full day with ideation and sharing ideas we want to find out how individuals see the new concept and how they would pitch their perfect school to a group of investors. This exercise will reveal if group members have a common understanding of the project or are totally misaligned.

Moderator: hands out empty sheets of paper and asks the participants to prepare a 2-minute pitch for potential investors. The moderator highlights that they should talk about business value and benefits for students and try to put them self in the investors shoes to answer the question why he/she should invest in such a project.

Participants: get 5-10 minutes to prepare their pitch and when the time is over present their pitch in front of the group. The moderator is the time keeper and ensure nobody spends more time than allowed when pitching the idea to the group

Tip: engulf participants into a small discussion and ask some questions similar to an nvestor who wants to know is investment protected.

Storytelling and video

Goal: To capture most ideas we recommend to ask one participant to walk the poster start to end and talk about what was achived during the day. Archive this video as important artifiact that captures most of the things that occurred during the worshop and are important for the users.

Moderator: make a video and captures the summary done by one or two participants. This summary usually will be 5 to 10 minutes long.

Participants: one makes the presentations and all others listen and can add additional insights if they like.

Tip: add the video to your documentation as transcript.

 Workshop closing

Moderator: thanks participants for contributing and announces next steps to be done. Below you can find a view workshop pictures.

##########################################################################

If you like the approach you can find a book in Kindle Shop

• It explains the entire method on 541 pages including: Why you need a workshop, Billboard Design Thinking Method, Ready made templates, Real Workshop Examples How to prices and promote a workshop How to set up your room What materials do you need
• Link: Kindle Shop