Phase B / Physical Kick-off

Physical Kick-Off in Querétaro Mexico | CW 41 2015

Goals

1.Team- and trustbuilding

Build a profound social link among the students as a basis for a solid collaboration during the course of the project. Several team spirit activities will be organized during the week.

2. Common understanding and first iteration phase

The main goal is to get to a common transdisciplinary understanding of the topic and the task. Therefore the exchange of the results of phase A is essential. Each team will be guided thourgh a process of five steps called immersion, affinity, ideation, prototyping/testing & communication.

Immersion (elop*athlon): An immersive fast-pace challenge taking the participants through an accelerated design loop: discovery of context through their heros, dramatic events, imaginative solutions and storytelling.

> Intuition (blog label)

Affinity: Immersive context discovery including interview with stakeholders and users, understanding of site and surroundings by the use of mindmapping and site mapping.

> Awareness (blog label)

Ideation: Experience of different techniques to boost lateral thinking, metaphorical thinking, clustering of ideas, decision making, synthesis. 

> Synthesis (blog label)

Prototyping+testing: Prototyping and simulation of ideas, visions, scenarios

through different media. > Visioning / Scenario building / Modeling

> Protomodel (blog label)

Communication: Putting together a first project intent, extracting its essence, communicating its value and showing a tentative roadmap under conditions of uncertainty, by means of storytelling, storyboarding

> Vision (blog label)

Through this process each team will be able to formulate a common vision and to start developing first possible scenarios. 

A summary of each (daily) step will be uploaded on the blog already during the physical Kick off week.

3. Stakeholders and local specificities

The students are given the unique opportunity to meet, in a common workshop, authorities, interest groups and users represented by Implan, the Patronage and La Jabonera (see chapter 3.5 Stakeholders). Thereby the teams have to do on-site research and collect information supported as much as possible by the academic team to become acquainted with the local specificities. The goal is to get familiarised with the local situation and boundary conditions of the area.

4. Project and Process Planning

Definition of the project’s process outline/plan: At the end of the kick-off week, the teams are to present a project plan including work packages, time line, definition of milestones, team resource planning, schedule of further activities, etc. The presentation of the project plan to faculty and experts concludes the kick-off week, dismissing the students to their home universities with comments and recommendations for the further development of the project. Each team has to agree on a possible timeline compatible with other academic obligations at the home university including regular meetings with the team coaches and the local coach. Process planning includes as well the organization of the team process, the definition of milestones, and the development of a transdisciplinary decision-taking-process.

5. Communication and Collaboration Tools

During the week several communication and collaboration tools will be tested and presented to get ready for the virtual team collaboration following the kick off week.The students get an introduction in collaborating and communicating by ICT (tools, methods, tips). Therefore, all students attend the so called lunch an learn sessions on how to use the different tools (video conferencing, blog, data sharing, process management,...).

Input 

Specific inputs by experts with a focus on design thinking, mindmapping, transdisciplinary working methods and process planning are provided to facilitate the project kick-off with respect to a common nomenclature. Essential aspects of the project are addressed during daily team discussions together with coaches and experts.

Coaching 

The coaching is based on a double coaching system: we distinguish between transdisciplinary team coaching and local disciplinary coaching. Both are taking an important role during the whole project.

Each team will be assigned a coach or coaches from different disciplines (transdisciplinary team coaches) in the role of tutors. They will follow closely the development of the teams’ work throughout the whole semester, will join the weekly meetings and are contact persons in case of conflicts. In parallel every disciplinary local group has its local coach that follows the work of all his/her students as well in regular meetings.

Goal at the End of Kick Off Week | Discussion, Oct.10th 2015

Each team presents a first project intent based on the five steps introduced during Kick Off. This includes a vision for the area of research and the focused site, argumenting around the relevant vector(s) of development, extracting the projects‘ essence, communicating its value and showing a tentative roadmap (process plannnig) under conditions of uncertainty. 

Deliverables
Presentation (NO ppt) sketches, ideograms, diagrams, common statements, conceptual models, movie, with process planning wall etc. showing the results of the first project iteration phase.