Clarify & Converge
During the Clarifying & Converging stage, the team attempts to make sense of and coalesce the data and insights generated during the Discovery phase. Gentle guardrails are applied to the information to lead to a central team question.
“I Wish”
Design thinkers have realized that one of the easiest way to crystalize a team’s point of view on a design challenge is to leap from sense making with simple “I wish” statements. These make the transition to the team’s central question much easier to suss out.
Team members wrote as many post-its as they could develop within the limited time frame, and posted them on a common board, explaining each as they added them. While this was happening, the facilitator gathered (or converged) the “I Wish” post-its into common shared theme areas on the board.
Key realizations from Table 1 included:
- The table realized that wishes fell into two categories: changes needed to the ethos or current model of distributions, and providing equitable access.
- Some participants wished that art was not considered merely a “luxury” and that it wouldn’t need to rely on government support, while others focused on how artists as well as audiences need to be treated fairly and receive equal access.
- What Do You Wish?
Go to our “I Wish” page to see a smattering of the wishes that were shared during this event, and add your own wish on this subject!
Dot Voting
This sharing was then Dot Voted by all table participants (each participant was given 3 dots to use to vote wherever they favored an idea), resulting in 2 focus statements to take forward: “I wish schools redesigned curricula to embed arts in all/most subject areas,” and “I wish everyone had access to a space and resources to create art.
Central Question
Finally, it was a simple step to take their passionate aspirational “wish” and convert it into and actionable design challenge, by replacing “I wish” with “How might we…” In that, each team was able to form their own central question within the overall central question, and was excited and prepared to ideate on a challenge that they themselves defined and owned.
This work led to the central question for Table 1: “How might we make the arts more accessible to everyone in society?”
