Hasta La Ideas

Throughout the two day Design Research Conference the frog design team wandered around interviewing attendees and encouraging them to fill out the cards they received at registration check-in. The top card stated, “As you listen to the speakers, engage with other conference attendees, and think about what you hear, we’d like you to capture some notes. Please fill out these cards and bring them to Monday’s 3:30pm interactive session.” The other cards had questions such as “What are the biggest challenges facing design research today”, “What superpower do you wish you had when conducting research”, and “What problems in the world should design researchers tackle”. Attendees had no idea what the frog team had up their sleeve, but attendees played along anyway. The frog team planned two activities for the end of each day of the conference, which required attendees to put their design thinking hats on, to interact with other attendees, teamwork, and of course fun.

Attendees gathered at 3:30pm on Monday ready to find out what role the cards would play in the first interactive frog activity. Everyone was asked to split up into groups of five people and to grab a worksheet. I joined a group of people, took a look at the worksheet and was really excited to find out that we were being asked to put together a Design Research Super Team! The worksheet had questions that matched the cards so we could collectively jot down the answer to the questions in one place as a team. It also had a space for the group to draw characters on the super team as well as name the group’s super team.

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