Rev up with Design Factory Melbourne #6

Rev Up with DFM is a series of short posts to get your day started. Delivered in bite-sized chunks, this series gives you a taste of a wide range of activities, that you can try out to enhance your own workflow or share them with your team. Each week, we will share an activity varying in four different themes; Gain Focus, Boost Energy, Find Inspiration and Make Connections.

This week’s theme: Boost Energy

This week’s activity gets our body moving and laughter spreading. The aim is to boost energy to get our bodies and minds reset and energised.

Last week we addressed how short transitional activities are important to make the most out of meetings and collaboration sessions and can help to shift your state of mind to the task at hand. Sometimes what you, your team or participants of your session need the most, is an energy boost. This often includes fun, laughter, physical engagement and being in the moment. This post will share a few activities on how to get really revved up and gain energy!

We need energy to get things done. Everything around us is energy and energy is shared in each interaction. When collaborating or creating something new with others, you want to ensure the energy is there, and everyone is engaged, present and connected. At times an ice breaker or other fun short activity is needed to remove initial tensions, especially if the participants are not yet familiar with each other. Or it could be that midway a meeting or workshop you sense that participants are becoming restless and disengaged, which calls for an intervention to recharge and inject some fresh energy into the mix. Energising activities also help to create variation into your session and create breaks for both body and mind. Especially when working most of our days seated and in front of a computer, these activities create a change in that dynamic and remind us to break the sedentary patterns and use our bodies.

When considering doing a booster, always make it fun! Humour has significant benefits for our wellbeing and performance and it can help to enhance participation, sustain attention and reduce stress (Savage et al., 2017). Humour often materialises through laughter, that is a signal of interaction and bonding, and a powerful way to relieve tension or stress (Edwards, 2010). Laughter triggers our brain to release dopamine (Edwards, 2010) which makes us feel good and connect with each other.

"Laughter is part of a universal language of basic emotions that all humans share. [...] When people share laughter, there is a special connection between them." (Savage et al., 2017, p. 344)

It is good to have a few short activities up your sleeve to bring them out when you sense that energy levels are dropping and you need the participants to stay active and energised. Choosing the right type of energiser is crucial, so consider how you want to break the session dynamic or leverage the activity. For example, a discussion heavy session might call for a nonverbal energiser or a group of music enthusiasts might appreciate an energiser involving some good tunes.

Boosting Energy - How to do it? 

Below is a selection of a few of our favourite energy boosters, which work for different contexts and for different participant groups. You can experiment with these activities individually or in a group. If you guide others through this activity, ensure all members are comfortable to participate.

Balancing Act

Ask everyone to get up and find something in the house that is a specific colour (e.g. purple) and walk back to their computer with it balanced on their heads. Everyone should sit with the item balanced on their heads until everyone has succeeded. If time allows, take a round of sharing and ask participants to tell why they chose that object. Perhaps there is a story involved? 

30-sec disco

This energiser combines fun and physical movement and it calls for leaving judgment and self-criticism at the door. Share your computer audio with others and put on some good dance tunes*. You can encourage participants to turn off their webcams if they are uncertain about dancing with others. Stand up, make sure you have space around you, put on a timer for 30 seconds and dance like nobody’s watching! The more you put in, the more energy you get out!

*Many online video conferencing platforms allow you to play computer or system audio, alternatively disconnect your headphones and play the music to others on your device.

Dress-up party

Give participants a short time to find something in their proximity to get ready for a virtual dress-up party. We encourage to keep the time short, to encourage bias towards action and to work with what first comes to mind or is easily available. Go around and share your characters, encourage people to come up with imaginary names and background stories for their characters.  

Did you experiment with one of these or another energiser? How did that activity make you feel? Was it fun? Did you break a sweat? Did you feel invigorated? Do you feel a rush of energy?

These activities could be organised without preparation whenever you sense that energy levels are low. If these activities feel like too much, standing up for 30 seconds and stretching is better than doing nothing. Perhaps that is the first step before jumping into a full disco mode. Most importantly, think about when a booster is needed and how it supports the next activity ahead. Consider your participants and calibrate according to how much you estimate people are willing to throw themselves into it. We encourage you to try these out with your own team or with a group of people who already are familiar with each other. 

There are also a number of great sources online for inspiration and instructions for different types of activities. Explore them and give them a go. Check out for example:

• IDEO: https://www.ideo.com/blog/5-exercises-that-break-down-barriers
• Hyper Island: https://www.hyperisland.com/business-solutions/remote-working-toolbox/remote-energizers
• Session Lab: https://www.sessionlab.com/blog/online-energizers/
• Mural: https://www.mural.co/blog/online-warm-ups-energizers

Stay tuned for the Rev up with DFM activity next week.

References

Edwards, S. (2010). Humor, laughter, and those aha moments. On The Brain: The Harvard Mahoney Neuroscience Institute letter, 16(2), 1-3.

Savage, B. M., Lujan, H. L., Thipparthi, R. R., & DiCarlo, S. E. (2017). Humor, laughter, learning, and health! A brief review. Advances in physiology education, 41(3), 341-347.