Our Process

Community Agreement | Designing Our Facilitation | Challenges

Community Agreement

At the project's beginning, we set standards to hold ourselves accountable. Our Community Agreement evolved as we learned and discovered more ideals through readings and research. Our initial guidelines set us on to our North Star but as our brief reframed, our navigation should be readjusted too.

  • “What is better? Who is it better for?”

    This involves putting human needs and emotions at the forefront of the process. It's about understanding, empathizing, and designing solutions that truly address the challenges people face.

  • “Systems are to us, as fish are to water. Experience something outside of the issue to see the issue.”

    The acknowledgement and valuing of diverse perspectives, knowledge systems, and ways of being. Showing openmindedness and appreciation of these diversities.

  • “You can’t solve a problem you can’t describe”

    Analyzing problems,concepts and ideas from multipliple perspectives, dimensions, and layers. Going beyond linear or one-dimensional thoght processes, incorporating depth, bredth and context.

  • Our approach emphasizes the interconnectedness of various elements and the consideration of the entire system. At the same time, dispersing decision-making authority and autonomy, ensuring accountability and responsibility.

  • Our goal is to envision solutions for the future. We aim to anticpate inflections and adapt to the upcoming needs, challenges, and changes that sprout from them.

  • Our group closely analyzes the smaller, more detailed aspects and the larger, overarching context with the same high-definition lens opening the way to better comprehension and solutuons.

  • “Being the designers we are, we’re in consequence business”

    We aim to do more than use colorful words. We want our words, actions, and intentions to represent the change we talk about, moving with authenticity and purpose.

Process

To structure our facilitation session, we employed a Diamond Design Process, initially diverging to explore various potential session formats before converging on a collectively agreed plan. To foster individual creativity, we initially brainstormed independently, allowing for personal exploration within flexible timelines. Later, in a collective brainstorming session, we shared and supplemented each other’s ideas, culminating in a collaboratively designed session blueprint. Throughout this journey, we embraced an open-ended approach while steadfastly aiming for our overarching North Star.

Our process underwent multiple iterations and prototypes as we navigated uncertainties, adapting the plan according to attendee confirmations and subsequent schedule changes.

The overall experience was profoundly collaborative, creating a nurturing environment for sharing ideas. As we became more familiar with each other’s strengths and contributions, the space for collaboration became increasingly comfortable and accommodating.

Challenges

  • Keeping the dynamics in mind, we extended our outreach to connect not only with primary stakeholders but also with equivalents across the industry.

  • Recognizing diverse perspectives on values and inclusion, we prioritize selecting the right words and frameworks. This approach enables participants to express their genuine ideas and fosters collaborative discussions by accommodating varied associations with these concepts.

  • We are actively addressing the challenge of aligning everyone's schedules to ensure simultaneous availability; this is an ongoing effort.