This week we had the pleasure of giving MA product design students at London’s St Martins college of design at UAL an introductory workshop to Design Improv™. The students were helping Renault develop future car visions – around areas such as modularity, autonomous driving and mobility as a service.
Design Improv™ is a game and methodology that I developed during my own masters thesis at IDII many years ago. It leverages the ideas of improv theatre, and in particular the games format they use when developing and practicing improv, to help solve design challenges. It can be used throughout the design process from exploring the problem through to refining your prototype and enacting service delivery, for instance.
We developed several new games for the session which were really useful in helping the students develop initial service concepts and uncover assumptions in their initial design directions.