Making a new workshop activity This is a simple photoessay of 4 days of prototyping a workshop activity. Wednesday I have been trying to think of a design fiction workshop activity that shows explicitly the links between ween pasts and futures and enables discussions of responsibility and sustainability. After playing with a few ideas, the […]
Author: Alastair Somerville
Rooting design fictions in responsibility and sustainability
I have a new workshop to deliver in July for a conference. The topic has not been defined yet so I am experimenting with possibilities. This post is about one idea I’ve developed to physical prototype level. With workshops, I need to see and use the planned activity to understand its worth. Practically, I need […]
Why coach?
Why coach? For 2023, I’m starting to coach people in workshop design and facilitation skills. This post is about the idea of coaching and the choice to be a coach. Becoming a facilitator The diagram at the top of this post has four roles on it – teacher, facilitator, tutor and coach. I mostly work […]
Structures for clarity and confidence in workshops
Designing and delivering your own workshop can be daunting. The mixture of design questions (like What is being taught? How can people learn? How do we share?) and facilitation questions (like How do we invite and welcome people? How do we create trust and safety?) can be a complicated mess. This post is about a […]
Writing a (photo) book
I design and facilitate a lot of different workshops. The last few years of hybrid and fully virtual workshops has meant I have adjusted a lot of ways I work. One thing I have added is physical versions of the content, like cards sent to participants. This was to try and avoid the horror of […]
Social Stories and Guided Reminiscence in museums & cultural places
Museums and other cultural places (like libraries and cafes) are excellent spaces for enabling people’s abilities to recall and share memories. This practice can be particularly beneficial for older adults and people with memory impairments like dementia. Using Guided Reminiscence, we can use the sensory environment and experiences of the present to recall personal and […]
Design is invisible
“Good design is invisible” is a fairly smug cliché among designers. Affordance It is based on the idea of Affordance. The idea that some design can be so intuitive, so obvious that people just use the product or service. They do not notice it as they benefit from it. However, there is a flip side […]
Bad words to describe new ideas
Sometimes when trying to explain a new idea it is good to use a diagram or an analogy. People understand things when they are positioned in ways that link to their existing mental models or knowledge. Sometimes. I also use neologisms. New words that can sit inside a sentence. They are not necessarily pretty words […]
4 O’s – mapping a project check in
I was asked to chat to a manager today about where they are in an ongoing project and whether there was any way I could be helpful. I know nothing about the project and very little about the organisation’s processes, methodologies and culture. So I needed a way of framing the short conversation and understanding […]
Wayfinding in places and projects
I use a simple framework when planning wayfinding projects. It is called ABCD. Alignment Boundaries Centered Direction You can learn a lot about the framework in the 30 minute talk I gave at Webexpo 2022 in Prague. The following link has both video of me talking and the slides – Successful Journeys. A new workshop […]