Dear readers and fellow Design & Critical thinkers,

I hope you are all well & safe! 🙏

Making sense of the complex and generating the time & space for opportunities are exercises tightly linked to innovation and design.

Senseframing, as introduced here by Daiana Zavate, is an important aspect of how we approach what we do, impacting our sensemaking and the type of opportunities we’re able to foresee:

Are we observing what truly emerges from the field or do we seek for anticipated patterns through the lense of some pre-determined paradigms?

Recently, following several discussions with the Design & Critical Thinking community on Slack and during our Virtual Chalet sessions, I extended the concept of humble, curious exploration as a way to make sense of the world and discovering emerging patterns. Curiosity can mitigate our own bias.

But this is not enough. We often see innovation and design as a solitary endeavour, lead by one individual and followed by many, despite themselves. This Eastern approach, as Zavate explains, is akin to the role undertaken in developing the “civilized world”: change or be changed.

Collaboration and co-creation through participatory design can bring the necessary diversity of minds, thinking styles, and perceptions of reality to generate a different space for opportunities.

The community as a playground for experimenting together

Next Tuesday, 27th April we will run our 2nd community workshop meetup. With Daiana Zavate and Krasi Bozhinkova from Owtcome, we will explore deep collaboration through Collaborative Drawing on the topic of “support”.

The number of seats is limited to 15 participants, so don’t hesitate to register now!

Making sense together through debates & discussions

Following our collaborative drawing session, next week on Thursday 29th April we will be testing a new format, the Community Debates, to help make sense of specific, preselected topics.

Thanks for reading, following, participating, and simply being there!

Stay safe,
Kevin

Discover The Explorer’s Metaphor Series

The explorer’s metaphor is a series of articles that aim to provide an introduction to sensemaking and complexity management to designers, innovators, and changemakers.

Get introduced to some key concepts, ideas, and principles through the use of metaphor that you can transpose to your context, allowing you to go beyond the shortcomings of problem-solving, transform your context and work towards new opportunities: become a curious explorer!