Team innoki

Hey there! You've reached the innoki blog - lines of thoughts & things we like and do. We are an innovation consultancy based in Berlin & Stockholm and work with human-centered design methods. The results: creative confidence, innovative products & prototypes and team cohesion. Curious? Read on & try www.innoki.de.

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It’s time to get going with this blog again! Since returning from India, I had been extremely busy to implement those changes in my life which I had dreamed up during my stay in India. I was spinning around myself for quite some months, driven by the urge to gain financial stability while working...

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Our co-founder Anna wrote about friend-founding, bootstrapping innoki and the power of teams! 

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Re:publica 2015 & innoki: Designing the village of the future in the year 2030

It’s amazing what you can come up with by bringing a diverse group of people, a creative method, inspiring surroundings, and a load of energy together in one place. At re:publica 2015, innoki held a one-hour workshop titled 2030: Living and working in the village of the future. Over 50 people participated in a design thinking fast forward to gather the views and needs of re:publica attendees.

Julia Kolm, Lea Feldhaus, Anna Kleibl, and Paul Weinhausen wanted to show that design thinking unleashes creative potential, in this case, imagining regional development in the countryside. In times of urbanization and trends that focus on bringing rural elements into the city (e.g. urban gardening and relaxation) we wanted to know what the ideal village would look like if we could design it from scratch for the year 2030. 

It was particularly interesting to investigate this challenge with people at re:publica 2015 due to their digital affinity, urban background and open-mindedness. We were curious what they would come up with if they were to move back to the countryside. After all, many people stated in previous interviews that it was definitely an option they considered. In fact, some already are doing it, given the conditions in their ideal villages are the “right” ones.

Workshop Kick-Off The many workshop participants split up into several teams and created a stunning set of ideas. After almost one hour of work the teams transformed their ideas into tangible prototypes. Due to tight timing not all the teams could present their findings (and we also didn’t expect such popularity ;) If you participated please add your comments and ideas again below). Here is a brief overview of what they developed and a description of prototypes presented.

Team Digitalia built a prototype of a house with personal and shared spaces that are flexible and adjustable to the inhabitants needs. Designing for a user needing freedom and nature and wanting to shape his or her own environment with like-minded people, their critical function was the inhouse maker-space. Here inhabitants could contribute by building things for everybody (multi-functional homes & co-creation). 

Team Humboldt created the garden of the future for Karla who needs inspiration for her work as a busy journalist. The garden is the home to future plants and the perfect place to relax and get inspired in. Various areas change and evolve over time through plants, colors, and paintings (public spaces & community development).

Team Villagitally created a solution for their user Miriam who wants everything to be organized: a big display for the village available on- and offline. Miriam is worried about her kids, so they are GPS-tracked and can be seen on the screen (the privacy issue is a possible complication to be considered). Neighbors can use  the screen to share and map tools, food, and news. To help people lead a healthy & active life, the three people who move around most are announced every week (wearables, shared economy & gamification).

Team Big Thinker asked themselves: What happens when a village resident misses the city and the interaction with like-minded people? Their fictional user Susan longs for a very comfortable and meditative way to get to the city and back to the village. The prototype shows a cosy cocoon where Susan can relax during her two to three hour journey (future mobility).

Team X focused on the following question: How to help user Adam escape overstimulation in the city without leaving it? The developed idea was to make the commute obsolete by bringing the village into the city. In this microcosm of nature with gardens and animals within urban city life, people could also use noise-cancelling headphones for obtaining a peace of mind (digital detox). Because of its attractiveness, the next ideation would be about how to secure that the city village is not overrun?

Main wishes, needs & challenges

It appears that interaction with the ecosystem around oneself, local community-building as well as continuous transformation are recurring key elements for a village life in 2030. There is a need to get together and create things with people around us. Anyone living in an apartment building knows the feeling of not even knowing their neighbors or what they do. And everybody living in a village knows the feeling of closing off from our surroundings, be it by building our own playground for the kids behind giant shrubs in our own garden or by rather living a private life instead of joining in on village celebrations. There might not be a quick solution for this. Maybe we need to take initiative and start a conversation, a party, a project or simply offer to help out. We feel that we need to become changemakers by claiming responsibility for our aspirations, and also those surrounding village life.

An underlying wish we observed is to get in touch with nature, live sustainably and to be able to spend time in a healthy way (work-life-balance). This trend has been around for a while now and has already been realized by pioneers around cities and in villages. From more extreme ‘Digital Detox Camps’ to cooperative farms and claiming little pieces of farmland, there are more and more grassroots initiatives being built. It could be that they are the bridges for a counter-movement of leaving the cities and moving back to the countryside.

At the same time, there needs to be a good internet connection (obviously), comfortable and accessible ways to reach the cities as well as openness between village ‘elders’ and newcomers. Shaping this kind of openness between the people who have lived in a village since they were born and those who move there is likely to be one of the bigger challenges we face in the near future? Science shows that humans are prone to resist change and are skeptical of the new. This makes it even more important to talk to each other on eye level, be understanding and ready to invest some time for slowly changing established structures. Probably a certain degree of resistance to frustration is helpful for this challenge. One day working together on a shared goal is going to be possible through a common vision.

We encourage everyone to continue developing these ideas and begin designing a better place to live – in the village and in the city. We thank all participants for their great enthusiasm and awesome prototyping! If you would like to know more about these ideas, the design thinking process or what else we do at innoki, come talk to us. P.S. You can find a .pdf of this article at https://re-publica.de/session/2030-living-working-village-future-solution-oriented-creative-workshop.