Provoking Strategic IoT Conversations: Helping Businesses Imagine Their Future !Matt Gorbet Susan LK Gorbet@mgorbet @slkgorbet

WORKSHOP RECAP

ThingsCon 2015AmsterdamDec 4, 2015

WHO ARE WE?

SUSAN LK GORBETEXPERIENCE DESIGNER (STANFORD, PENN) STRATEGIC FORESIGHT, COMPUTER SCIENCE, PSYCHOLOGY

MATT GORBET CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIST (MIT MEDIA LAB)RESEARCH, DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE, TECHNOLOGY ART

We teach businesses how to run strategic, creative, collaborative conversations with their customers.

WHAT HAPPENED at ThingsCON:

1. Teams explored and demonstrated four pre-existing future IoT scenarios using props and littleBits. Each group acted theirs out to share with everyone.

Photos: Frank Van Boheemen

2. We led a discussion about each scenario’s human and technical aspects: What was IoT’s role in the human experience, and what was happening technically to enable this?These abstracted human and technical capabilities of IoT were then carried forward to help people imagine new scenarios in other contexts.

Photo: Frank Van Boheemen

People,Objects,Environment Persona Thing-Ona

3. We introduced a sequence of three tools to help groups conceive of new IoT scenarios:

People-Objects-Environment: Explore a place mindmap-style, starting with the people, then listing objects and environmental features relevant to each person. !Each group was given a context, then built their own POE map.

Photo: Frank Van Boheemen

Personas: Paint a picture of a specific individual in order to build an understanding of their experience, needs and goals. !Each group chose one individual from their POE map to focus on.

Photo: Frank Van Boheemen

Thing-Ona: Re-imagine the objects in the persona’s environment by thinking of them as active participants with personalities and goals. !Each group chose 2-3 objects important to their Persona, then created a Thing-Ona for each one.

Photo: Frank Van Boheemen

4. Once the groups had created Thing-onas, they began thinking physically by building rapid prototypes, then acting out conversations between the objects and people (a.k.a. bodystorming). This helped participants imagine entirely new capabilities for connected objects and environments.

Photos: Frank Van Boheemen

5. Finally, the Persona’s newly imagined experience with IoT-enabled objects was captured using a pre-scripted Storyboard format.

This told the story of the new technology in human terms and demonstrated the impact of the newly-conceivedIoT objects.

Photo: Frank Van Boheemen

Quotes from participants:

6. A discussion wrapped up the workshop at the end, and participants expressed their enjoyment of the process and how it changed their thinking:

!“The personalities of the objects helped us think outside our previous understanding of what these things were.” !“Because I had this tangible object, I no longer was thinking in terms like ‘I have to push this button’ but instead, ‘I just want to communicate with this object.’” !“Because we made this… I was suddenly thinking of what I would be able to see if I were this projector, [up on the ceiling].” !“Everyone was working together the whole time and it was very smooth — we didn’t criticize each others’ ideas like people normally would. What a good way to work.”

Photo: Frank Van Boheemen

If you’d like help having strategic conversations in a creative, collaborative way with your own partners, customers, or clients, let us know: !Within the Netherlands: ThinkG, Susan LK Gorbet (susan.thinkg@gorbet.com) !Worldwide: Gorbet Design, Matt Gorbet and Susan LK Gorbet (matt@gorbetdesign.com and susan@gorbetdesign.com)