Workshop Design

Understand the layers

Understanding the concept of card layers helps you, with the cards, to better design workshops. The cards are entry points for discussion. You can relate and think about each card in different ways. Keep in mind what mindset you use when you think about the cards.

Imagine that each card has multiple layers. The layers are different ways you relate and think about the card. The layers often contain information that you either know or want to find out.

What you decide to write down depends on what layer you are addressing.

Mapping

Current situation

What is the current state of the card right now? This can either be objective or your subjective (sometimes biased) view.

Definition of success

How far would you need to get for things to be consider a success?

Future

You could explore everything from people vision to envisioning different scenarios (for example utopic, dystopic or status quo scenarios)

History

What happened before?

Goals & milestones

What are goals and milestones for each card?

Learnings

Learnings connected to each card.

Sort & assess

Importance

How important is the card?

Priority

How should you prioritize the cards if you have to decide or shortlist?

Scope

Is the card inside or outside the scope of your project?

Urgency

How urgent is a certain perspective?

People

Gatekeepers

Who keeps the key or is in the way for getting “forward”?

Responsible

Who is responsible or accountable for different parts?

Technicalities

Methods

What methods are used?

Processes

What are processes that dock into this card?

Tools

What tools do you use to work with respective card.

Knowledge

Articles & books

Are there good articles and books that inspire your work with different cards?

References

What are references you think of for each card?

Theories

What theories are you guided by related to each card?

Ways to create layers

Use rows to define different layers with post-its

Using different post-it colors as layers.
Each post-it color would represent a different layer of a card.

Add as many rows as needed.

Different pen colors to represent different layers

Gray and red represent two different types of layers. One example could be that gray pen is used to describe the current situation while the red pen would describe new ideas.

Using rows on a long table

Here people write on paper cloth. Scotch tape is used on the paper cloth to divide the rows. Each card represents a column, so all things related to each card are only written in the assigned column.

The exercise The Long Table describes in-depth how this can be used.