Co-create innovation!
If you decide to co-create/co-design innovative concepts and solutions with the assistance of your city’s residents and/or experts in the Public Transport sector, the organisation of co-creation workshops is an appropriate approach.
Each co-creation workshop consists of three indicative main phases (introduction, core co-creation and evaluation). Several methods can be applied to the implementation of each phase.
Which method suits best in your needs and your workshop’s objectives? Some indicative examples are listed below.
Introduction Phase
Standard Personal Introduction
Ice-breaker activity in which participants get to know each other.
Advice: Set predefined criteria to ensure that everyone gives and receives the same basic info.
Marshmallow Challenge
Participants (all together or split into teams) try to build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti and put a marshmallow on the top. This is a nice way to initiate a workshop, triggering the creativity of the participants.
Advice: This is a challenging ice-breaker method, however give some minutes to the participants to introduce themselves after the implementation of the method
Co-creation Phase
Brainstorming
Participants freely express their ideas, creating an inventory.
Advice: Avoid more than one person talking at the same time and make sure that everyone expresses their opinion. An experienced moderator is crucial for this method.
Conceptual mapping
Participants visually demonstrate the brainstorming discussion. This method stimulates the generation of new ideas and allows the creative process to be written up and made available for all to view.
Advice: Make practice on conceptual mapping before using it in a workshop. Preconceived limitations must be set aside.
Role-playing
Participants play roles to facilitate the discussion on complex social issues in a non-threatening environment.
Advice: Role-plays work best when kept simple, and participants need few minutes to get into their roles. Participants volunteer and are never forced to play a role they are uncomfortable with.
World Café
Participants discuss a question or issue in small groups around café tables. At regular intervals, participants may move to a new table.
Advice: Select clear, thought-provoking and open-ended questions in order to engage participants and help them successfully produce cross-pollinated ideas. People should be reminded to record all the ideas, doodles and questions produced in the flipchart.
Evaluation Phase
Two dimension axis
Participants place the co-created concepts on a two-dimensional axis being assessed against two criteria that will represent their feasibility and potential. This makes it easier to identify the most promising ideas.
Advice: Keep the number of co-created concepts low, as the data processing is time-consuming. Use another evaluation method for limiting the number of co-creation concepts and then evaluate the top five of them by using this method.
Dot voting
Participants are allocated a number of stickers or dots, that are used to vote, prioritise and converge upon an agreed solution.
Advice: Allow appropriate time for participants to read all the ideas and evaluate them.
For more co-creating methods and for details about their appropriate use go through relevant CIPTEC Deliverables (D3.1, D3.2, D3.4, D3.5).