If a client writes at the end of the collaboration that "it was nice to get exactly what we wanted without knowing beforehand what that would be", things have probably not gone too badly.

But let's start at the beginning. First of all, we had to find out what our client from the Netzteufel project at Evangelische Akademie Berlin had in mind. Here's what we knew in advance: the project was to be participatory, on the topic of "Positive Narratives as an Alternative to Hate Speech", featuring speakers from the academy as facilitators (new methods welcome!), appealing to the academy's very heterogeneous audience. 

Together we finally defined planpolitik's assignment:  an interactive, creative, open-ended workshop accessible to people from a wide range of backgrounds, prepared in such a way that the academy team could run it themselves. After some joint conceptual considerations, we finally had our idea: a modified form of the design thinking process, in which positive narratives are developed over two days in four working groups and these are then tested as prototypes for digital implementation. 

Before working out the concept, however, a test of the Design Thinking method was carried out with the Academy team itself. In addition to experiencing the method in a light-hearted way, this was also about adapting the method to the intended workshop context. After all, all participants should feel safe and in good hands. Based on these considerations, we finally developed a detailed workshop schedule for the four speakers.

During the two-day workshop with around 30 participants, we were present in the background as method coaches. We watched the method work its magic: It led the participants away from constant writing and towards brainstorming, drawing and building - paired with continuous feedback loops in which the ideas and analogue and digital prototypes were put to their first application tests. 

In the debriefing it became clear that the workshop itself was a very well functioning prototype! Only in a few places did we see a need for adaptation; overall, the idea had worked smoothly. No wonder that a year later there was a new edition with an optimised concept - this time even as a digital premiere!