The Work•Play•Experience Blog

Our session at the Service Design Network Conference in Cologne

By popular demand - quite literally - we'll be running our hit workshop at the SDN conference in Cologne this week. This time, it will be in German...

We'll be talking about the theatrical tools we use in service design. We believe they are unusually effective, insightful, approachable and fun. A customer from a large German company comments:

"Speaking from experience with WorkPlayExperience - it's just amazing how the theater setting immediately creates a different mind set with the participants and thus makes them play, interact and learn more (and better)!" (full quote here)

Pic by Beat Schweizer

If you are thinking of coming, here is what you get for your 90 minutes.

DOING, NOT TALKING
First, it will be very, very active. I don't believe that people learn much by listening, reading or being talked at, so in our session you will be up on your feet, trying things out.

PURELY PRACTICAL
We will be sharing tools that we use successfully with our clients. They are real, they work. We hope you will adopt them.

A DIFFERENT APPROACH
We use investigative rehearsal in service design work - and that is not the same thing as "practicing" or "roleplay" (which most participants hate, let's be honest). Rehearsal is an iterative, explorative process which taps both creativity and emotion. We'll be showing you how we lead participants into it (even the conservative ones), how we run a rehearsal, and how we use concepts like subtext and dramaturgy to take it to a higher level of co-creation.


The spooky part of investigative rehearsal - and this is part of why theater works - is the way it connects tiny details of the customer experience to the entire service design architecture and indeed to the whole value set of the organisation. At first glance, it can look like a customer experience tool, but it is much more.

This is an updated version of the workshop we gave in Berlin and San Francisco - suitable for people unfamiliar with our work. If we've tickled your fancy, sign up early - each time we run this workshop, it sells out fast. We'll see you on Friday morning.

And if you have any questions, just get in touch. :)


PS. Obviously, there will be NO Powerpoint. 
PPS. But there may be chickens.