Co-Creative Workshop in Beirut: June 12, 2013
Wednesday evening, sometime around 6:30pm, in a small room with plexi-glass and chip-board walls, with one chugging air-conditioner, a table of fatayer and Pepsi bottles, twenty-one people created a flurry of activity as they interviewed each other at small tables, using their hands to emphasize ideas and emotions, caught in rapt discussion, debating the meaning of trust. Then the power went out.
No one batted an eye – not a single hesitation marred the impassioned conversation. In Lebanon, when the power goes out, it is no big affair – it will be back – we trust it will be back – and that people will continue with their work, their lives, without smashing any windows, looting in the streets, or making a big to-do. The room got hot and stuffy – fast. It could barely hold twenty-one people sitting calmly still, let alone those attempting to design boundary objects addressing specific elements of trust in Beirut in a mere three hours. I found myself frequently stepping outside to fan myself, wiping the sweat from my brow. Yet the design work continued.
The workshop hosted by four graduate students of MiD was a clear success. Seventeen Lebanese people from various backgrounds actively took part in a very accelerated design process, in five small teams, engaged in the issues at hand, with impressive results. Our team had carefully crafted every minute of the three hours, unlike the free-flowing nature of our first exploratory workshop, here we directed the participants through ten specific activities ranging from ice-breakers, to interviews, to problem definition to scenario-enactment to prototyping.
With enough attention given to each group individually, according to their place in the process as a whole, they were able to make sense of each step and what we asked of them. It helped that we had a hand full of seasoned designers among the participants to keep things running smoothly.
In the end, five groups presented five boundary objects ranging from interview tools, to interactive street installations, to organizational games. As we further develop these prototypes over the weekend, they will be documented here, as well as the testing that follows.
By mixing the expertise and subtle understanding of our guests(/hosts) from Beirut with the goals and design research background of our MiD team, we managed a compelling co-creative session amongst those who have an interest in Beirut, change, and their fellow human beings.