W9: Strategic Dialogue Toolkit: Facilitated Methods for Design Researchers

Abstract

Ethnographic researchers are often more at home in the field than in organizational settings, as designers are in the open studio. We often see competing internal goals and social networks within organizations trump insights from solid, research-based design proposals, presentations and reports. The Strategic Dialogue workshop prepares participants with tools for organizing collaborative stakeholder workshops that help you establish joint ownership of the meaning of research. This workshop introduces participants to collaborative sensemaking methods effective for creating strategic proposals following research in business, innovation and design contexts. The Toolkit presents methods developed and selected for their effectiveness after conducting exploratory research, when a business or product strategy is required yet still emergent and malleable.
Strategic Dialogue requires negotiating open and disciplined participation, especially in fuzzy situations with conflicting goals. This social design approach presents a mix of dialogue styles to enhance ideation and mitigate power in multi-stakeholder engagements.

Approach

Learning Goals
Learn dialogic methods appropriate for engaging stakeholders in participatory workshops.
Practice and apply each method thorough active participation in a workshop setting.
Learn to apply Strategic Dialogue across business and design lifecycles.
Learn a framework to plan Strategic Dialogue sessions.
Gain direction on expand one’s newly-acquired Strategic Dialogue skills.

Key Benefits
The Strategic Dialogue Toolkit helps participants develop skills to organize design research workshops to collaboratively formulate strategy from field or customer data. We present a research-informed approach effective for mixed teams. The workshop process promotes values of collaboration, interpretive ways of knowing (sensemaking), participatory decision-making, and emergence. Participants gain practical skills, experience and awareness of current facilitative approaches, and insights from adapting the model to their own applications and concerns.br />

Structure

Agenda & Approach
The workshop process progresses through three stages: 1. Open 2. Divergent 3. Convergent Four core methods have been adapted for the context: 1. Appreciative Inquiry 2. World Cafe 3. Visual Reflection 4. Structured Dialogue

Target Audience

This workshop helps teams reflect upon and quickly structure strategic proposals as a group. The EPIC workshop accounts for the need for field data and user perspectives (emic), observations and categories of interest of the design team (etic), and planning and business objectives critical to teams and organizations (strategic). Each method and exercise for making sense of data is presented in simulated business scenarios engaging with different stakeholders. Working in small groups, participants explore variations based on stages of the design process or project lifecycles. Target Audience This workshop is aimed at intermediate to senior practitioners/researchers interested in developing a facilitative engagement style with stakeholders and teams. Background in field research and product or service design is helpful and contributes to the learning context for all attendees. Participants should have some familiarity with the struggle of developing meaningful, valid representations of research in a business context.

Organizers

• KALEEM KHAN, Founding Partner, True Insight (Toronto & USA); Industry Advisor, Ryerson University, OCAD University sLab and Mobile Experience + Design conference
PETER JONES, Ph.D. Redesign (USA) and Faculty, Ontario College of Art and Design (Toronto)