February 20, 2017
I have been reading a lot about Millennials, this new breed stemming from the digital age.
Were these Millennials so much different?
I, as a GenX, could easily relate to what I was reading and did not realise the real gap until I had the opportunity to directly compare the ways of thinking, the value systems, attitudes, and mental models, of Millennials and Baby Boomers.
The opportunity came through some workshops I facilitated to explore how customers felt about brands and their experience as consumer and shopper.
I decided to run the workshop using Lego Serious Play, a facilitation method that asks participants to build metaphorical models with Lego bricks to answer specific challenges and questions.
The method is based on narratives and storytelling, and participants are the only one who hold the interpretative keys to decode the metaphors and stories kept in their model. After building their model to answer the question, participants share their stories and their models with everyone, explaining the meaning of their models and sharing their views and perspectives on the issues I was investigating.
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Posted in cocreation, CX, LEGO SERIOUS PLAY, Legoview, Methodology, Organisations |
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February 12, 2016
Recently I have spent time reading and considering the future of UX and how recent research are affecting our understanding of our cognitive experiences and our perception.
I still had no chance to organise my thoughts into a decently structured article and explain what I see happening in the future. But if you are keen to know more, Marek Pawlowsky, the man behind MEX, invited me to talk about what’s boiling… And the result is a long chat (approx from min 40′) about Lego Serious Play, principles of embodied cognition and evolving research methods for the next generation of digital experiences.
Posted in cocreation, LEGO SERIOUS PLAY, Methodology, Podcast, ux |
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July 5, 2015
Unleash playfulness
Lego bricks are a fascinating tool. Mostly considered a creative and engaging toy, they are much more than that. What is a toy that enhances children’s creativity and imagination, becomes a tool to enhance understanding and explore opportunities in business.
There is an increasing interests in anything that is LEGO: from the business case of a company that employed co-creation and changed a negative trend in the ’90s into a global success.
And there are an increasing number of applications that are exploiting the simplicity of systemic bricks that can be combined in countless ways and gain a number of different meanings based on individual narratives and stories.
Bricks are natural story maker tool: children imagine adventures while playing and building objects. And so do adults, although they may need some help.
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Posted in cocreation, LEGO SERIOUS PLAY, Organisations |
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May 17, 2015
In March 2015, I was challenged by Marek Pawlowsky from MEX to do something unique to inspire the UX designers’ community and to show them the potential of Lego Serious Play.
Marek is not a novice, being a participant into one of my past workshops, and the challenge was exciting enough for me to accept it!
The goal of the session was to inspire, entertain, make the audience curious, intrigue them, challenge their ordinary ways of thinking, introduce them to new ideas, theories and opportunities.
I’ve imagined how would a speed dating with LSP look like and this is what happened…! (more in the next page)
Patrizia Bertini demonstrates Lego Serious Play and considers creative methods for future experience design from Marek Pawlowski on Vimeo.
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Posted in Events & Fun, LEGO SERIOUS PLAY, Methodology, theory, ux, Video |
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March 29, 2015
[Thoughts after Mex15, Slides at the end]
Markets are conversations
It was back in March 1999 when a group of forward thinking people published a revolutionary book based on 95 thesis that explained that the old business models were disrupted by internet and technologies. They said that markets were conversations,they explained that it was time to start listening to the consumers and to engage in conversations.
The book, The Cluetrain Manifesto, was a revolutionary and visionary text that clearly saw the direction technologies were taking society and the business. Internet and technologies dramatically changed in these 16 years, but every change reinforced the thesis of the Cluetrain Manifesto, proving how old business models were obsolete and could lead companies and business into a quick obsolescence.
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Posted in cocreation, LEGO SERIOUS PLAY, Organisations, ux |
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December 21, 2014
Cocreation brings together individuals
[Excerpt. The full article is available on UXBooth. Many thanks to Marli Mesibov].
“In the past decade, new technologies ranging from Twitter to customer service chat-windows have led to an increase in the quantity and quality of interactions between people and organizations. But listening to user feedback isn’t where the company-user interactions end. Today more than 50% of Fortune 500 companies have made co-creation an integral part of their innovation strategy, as Andrew Welch—Chief Executive Officer of Y&R reports.
Yet in user experience design, most organizations take a traditional approach to user research and design, using a researcher to act as a middle-man between users, designers, and business stakeholders. Users are consulted in the process, but not given creative control over solutions.
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Posted in cocreation, LEGO SERIOUS PLAY, Methodology |
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November 15, 2014
Facilitation’s thorny issues
Facilitating is an art. it requires a mix of personality traits, like the ability to guide and lead a group, a set of knowledge about group dynamics, psychology, and techniques.
A facilitator is usually an external member, someone who enters into a group and guides them through a journey to get to a goal. The design part is the key: a facilitator always needs to know exactly where the group is, the next steps, the timing of every activity and include any eventual recovery plan in case something does not goes according to the plans.
Facilitator’s personality is another essential factor: the facilitator needs to be able to engage and lead the group, mitigate power games and dominant personalities and to involve shy and silent people without putting pressure.
All is clear, until the facilitator faces a challenge: facilitate within a group they know well.
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Posted in LEGO SERIOUS PLAY, Methodology, theory |
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June 20, 2014
© Patrizia Bertini
In the past few years, the number of articles published around Lego Serious Play is hugely increased.
The initial theories developed in the mid ’90s, 20 years ago, by Johan Ross and Bart Viktor and put into its current shape by Robert Rasmussen, are today converging and mingling with new trends and emerging needs.
What was supposed to simply be a language, communication tool, problem solving methodology, based on the belief that everyone can contribute to the discussion, the decisions, and the outcome, it has become a tool for exploring, both a crinkly and torn treasure map to be completed with the imagination of the facilitator and the participants, and a hammer to deconstruct and construct new opportunities.
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Posted in LEGO SERIOUS PLAY, Methodology, theory |
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June 12, 2014
I recently had the pleasure of facilitating a LEGO SeriousPlay workshop at Foolproof with Hot Source members. One of the participant, Marek Pawlowski, shared his experience.
As a facilitator, used to describe the method, it was refreshing and an immense pleasure to know that he experienced exactly what I always described when I talk about the power and benefits of LSP. Thank you @Marek for such an amazing post!
Improvement requires change, whether that happens gradually through iteration or in big leaps through sudden sparks of creativity. This is true of improving anything, from companies to individual products. It’s something I think about a lot in the context of the MEX initiative, which is, at its heart, about helping people to improve digital experiences. We are always looking for new ways to equip people to make good changes to the user experience of the products they’re designing.
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Posted in LEGO SERIOUS PLAY, Methodology, Organisations |
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April 21, 2014
LEGO Serious Play used to co-create new services at Bologna Global GovJam 2013.
Lego Serious Play is a facilitation method that was designed in ways to enhance business performance by bringing around the table key stakeholders and by facilitating the discussion and meaning sharing activities through the use of LEGO bricks, metaphors and storytelling.
LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is a method that allows participants to negotiate decisions and strategic and operative plans and to co-create ideas creatively, socially and interactively. Thanks to the peculiar collaborative and social dynamics enacted by the method, all participants in an LSP workshop contribute to the discussion and to the decisions. The LEGO bricks act as co-creation tool and as a communication mediator: bricks are both a media to build and express complex ideas through storytelling and metaphors, and bricks act as a mediator between participants, allowing people to overcome hierarchies and power games that often affect workshop like activities and co-creation initiatives.
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Posted in cocreation, LEGO SERIOUS PLAY, Methodology, theory |
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LegoViews 