A workshop design strategy to promote experimentation
A workshop design strategy to help integrate design thinking into policy-making processes
Project Overview
Duration
3 weeks
Region
Canada
Project Goal
Empower Government of Canada executives by demonstrating how experimentation aligns with their top priorities, leading to smarter investments, and improved program effectiveness. Overcome barriers and speak their language to foster engagement in utilizing experimentation as a valuable tool.
Team
Anwesha Sengupta
Sushmita Narayana
Neeraja Shirdore
My Role
Research and Insight Synthesis, Wireframing,
Rapid Prototyping
Empower Government of Canada executives
Methodologies Used
Landscape Analysis, Affinity Mapping, User Journey Mapping, Visual Synthesis, Usability Testing
Demonstrate the value of experimentation
Overcome reistance to utilizing experimentation as a tool
Project Impact
Following a 2 week sprint process and rapid prototyping, we developed a gamified experience as a workshop to help executives uncover the value of experimentation.
Phase 1 - Foundation
Research and Synthesis
For this project, we conducted a rapid design research and synthesis process. We interviewed subject matter experts from the Canadian Government to gain insights into the policy-making process, their percepection on experimentation, and identify their pain points and needs.
Additionally, we performed extensive desk research and competitive analysis to explore existing solutions relevant to experimentation in government settings.
The research goal was to seek strategies to integrating experimentation into the organizational DNA of the Canadian Government, with a specific focus on engaging executives aiming to alleviate the fear of failure among executives and foster a culture that embraces experimentation and acknowledges that success may not always be immediate.
Insights
Experimentation is not new. It has always been around
Executives are unaware or oblivious to the benefit of evolving their approach
Executives are not comfortable with failing
Competing demands strap executives for time to prioritize experimentation.
Executives are uncomfortable with the ambiguity of experimentation
Execs feel the need to be "right" or "successful" at all times
How might we reinforce that experimentation is not new and make executives feel comfortable with failure?
Starter Concepts
Digital Platform for interaction
Strategy and Solution Recommendations
Gamified training program
Learning through Immersion
A Unified Platform
What: We designed a gamified training program broken into smaller activities, delivered through a platform digitally unifying the employees housed in the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, ensuring theoretical learning through immersive experiences.
Why: A non-intrusive yet engaging platform facilitates richer relationships and sharing of ideas and progress across teams.
It also brings transparency and a higher level of accountability into the system.
It incorporates gamification to make the process easy and fun.
Program Details
Overall Training Duration: Week-long training session.
Activity Duration: 5-10 minute long activity followed by the detailed content of the course.
The Platform Dashboard Key Features:
Designed to keep track of progress and leaderboards
Keeps track of friends and other members to allow healthy competitiveness.
FAQs lead to resources that orient users to values of experimentation.
Discussion Forum helps connect and initiate conversations.
Game Details
Why Gamified Training: Training programs can be draining and too reductive. We believe lived-experiences can help individuals learn soft skills like risk-taking and experimentation in a better way.
How: The activities are designed to communicate some of the core tenets of experimentation-
• Data trumps intuition
• Staying Curious
• Rapid innovation + Testing
• Democratic idea sourcing
• Experimenting is in everyone's DNA
• Getting comfortable with failing & iterating
Projected Outcome of the Gamified Training
