Movement and Divergent Production: Understanding opportunity for strategic kinesthetic movement during participatory ideation sessions

Abstract

With strategic kinesthetic movement making its way into education and business, and design thinking also edging into those same fields, it seems natural that the two could be integrated and referenced by facilitators who are responsible for leading a group through participatory ideation sessions. Design Thinking is a human-centered innovation process, which ultimately influences innovation and business strategy. It refers to applying a designer’s sensibility and methods of problem solving to an innovation process.1 Designers reach out to stakeholders within an opportunity space through design research methods. Often times, the designer will take on the role of a facilitator and conduct meetings with the stakeholders in order to gather information, generate ideas, or evaluate specific concepts.2 Facilitated sessions in which all stakeholders have to opportunity to contribute equally are referred to as participatory design process facilitation sessions. Participatory ideation sessions are meetings focused on one stage in a design process; the ideation stage. This research project is focused on the stage in a human-centered innovation process, referred to as the ideation stage, in which ideas are generated with stakeholders. During participatory ideation sessions, facilitators lead groups of participants through organized and strategized agendas, utilizing design research methods with the sole purpose of generating ideas for improving specified opportunity spaces.3 Generating ideas with the stakeholders allows the designer to gain insight into the stake-holder’s point of view, which ultimately aids the designer in creating a meaningful solution to a design problem. The purpose of this design research project is to develop a framework from which facilitators may gain insight and understanding of how to develop their own participatory ideation sessions utilizing strategic kinesthetic movement customized to specific contexts. The development of these participatory ideation sessions will involve the making and manipulation of generative methods and tools revolving around strategic kinesthetic movement. Designers working as facilitators utilize movement for many reasons. Movement increases productivity, confidence, creativity, and focus during facilitated sessions. Movement elevates the average body temperature which is a sign of greater blood circulation, which means more oxygen is arriving at the brain, making concentration easier.4 Movement has also been proven to improve self esteem,5 potentially enabling participants to contribute more ideas without fear of being judged. The absence of judgment allows for an increase in divergent production during participatory ideation sessions. Divergent production is defined as producing from one’s memory storage a number of alternative items of information to meet a certain need, either in exact or in modified form, as in thinking of alternative tools that might be used in opening a package.6 How might designers harness the power of movement during their facilitated sessions?