Worrell researcher, Ryan Sohlden, presented at the biennial Participatory Design Conference 2008 in early October.
The conference invited international corporate, design and academic leaders to present findings in the field of Participatory Design. Mr. Sohlden shared methods used in Worrell's two-day Innovation Labs that facilitate collaborative brainstorming among professional creatives, clients, and other stakeholders.
Worrell believes the organizations it collaborates with have the ability to develop innovative concepts through a creative brainstorm process. By engaging project stakeholders into the sessions, the results are a direct involvement of people with unique perspectives in the co-design of things and technologies used.
It is common for Innovation Labs at Worrell Design to incorporate analogies to get participants to think outside the box. Clients bring in their homework assignments of analogous industry examples, then collaborate in teams and begin building concepts from products of existing platforms. The existence of alternative solutions gets the ball rolling for concepts that break free of traditional thought.
Analogies are one example of how key stakeholders of product development can contribute to the creative process. Innovation Labs trigger and harness concepts and translate each to design solutions. Enforced at Worrell and defined at the Participatory Design Conference 2008, is a vision that interaction among research designers and stakeholders is a skill where the core practice is human interaction among various groups. It is about involving different stakeholders to define direct needs each holds, and organizing those needs into a flexible solution that in the end aligns to successful product design solutions.