Page 31 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2016

expression, reactions. This allows data to be gathered that will serve as insights into How Might We.The next step is Downloading. This is wherethe team comes together to write on ‘post-its’ all the insights they gleaned based on the eld research. The team then will come up with a limited and focused number of questions they want to brainstorm on. The questions should not lead to solutions or answers but rather be open and inclusive for opportunities and allow for turning the insights inside out and making them into an operable question for brainstorming.For example How Might We create a safer experience for refugees?IdeateOnce the team has several How Might We questions then the brainstorm process starts. This is a very fast-paced idea generation sprint that avoids self-judgment allowing you to think big, wild and free, creating a safe space for innovation, and allowing the brain to unblock and generate unexpected ideas. This is where magic happens. In the beginning ideas are pretty raw, but a wild idea can lead to the most authentic and meaningful solution to a problem. There is no critique in this phase but rather a spirit of building on the giant’s shoulders. The ideas need to be allowed to exist in this initial phase in order to be able to mature.Once the idea generation ends it is time to group ideas, merging identical thoughts into big clusters. The team will then select the most salient idea and develop it further. The diversity of the group plays an extra special role here as this brings diversity of thoughts and di erent points of view. This plays a huge role in the human-centred design approach and is more meaningful and insightful.PrototypePitch comes next. The team presents to the ‘public’, exposing their ideas to get a fresh ‘setof eyes’ on their thought process and receive feedback. This is a kind of small reality check as it examines the question, ‘is this really addressing the users’ needs?’ Feedback is extremely important, that is why there is no space for egos in the human-centred design approach. Afterthe pitch, the teams come back together and iterate. The iteration process continues until the prototype phase. At this time, the teams have arrived at a solution that can be implemented.This methodology is highly used by IDEO, Hyper Island and now recently Heather Chaplin, who has been trying this approach with Journalism+Design.For The 19 Million Project, human-centred design thinking is extremely meaningful and a game changer in this huge humanitarian crisis. When faith in humanity is lost it is time to allow space for change. Extreme crisis calls for extreme solutions. When the European Union is the rst to admit they have a lack of leadership facing this problem, it’s time for an extreme approach.The 19 Million Project was a collaborativee ort between Chicas Poderosas, CILD, Fusion, Univision and GEN, bringing together morethan 150 journalists, developers, designers, lawyers, humanitarians, and activists from 70+ organisations across 28 di erent countries to use human-centred design thinking to bring forth change and nd solutions to the Mediterranean refugee crisis.Chicas PoderosasUsing this same philosophy and approach on storytelling, in 2013 I created Chicas Poderosas, a movement to address the lack of power from female voices in the digital world. Here the Internet has another extremely powerful role, as although a huge percentage of investigative journalists in Latin America are women, only a few are extremely savvy in digital production, and what happens in most cases is that a womanAC/E DIGITAL CULTURE ANNUAL REPORT 201631Smart Culture: Impact of the Internet on Artistic Creation