The workshop kicked-off with an introduction, followed by a presentation by Leila Ben Gacem, a socio-cultural opportunities designer and social entrepreneur who recently converted a 17th century house in the Medina into Dar Ben Gacem, a beautifully designed and cozy guesthouse. Leila took us through her entrepreneurial journey highlighting the Medina-specific challenges she faced from legal difficulties around deeds and inheritance, to complications around logistic and transport, to declining infrastructure, and more. She also highlighted potential opportunities and invited participants to embrace the creative process to to unlock the fantastic potential of the Medina.
This initial presentation set the tone for an initial brainstorming where participants dove to explore the challenges and opportunities in three parallel sessions focused on “living”, “working” and “visiting” the Medina. This was followed by a wild safari where teams of two to four people took off to the street to observe, interview “users” and harvest user insights.
In the second half of the workshop, the teams reframed the “creative question” to make it more specific and more focused on a user-need. Then, they were led on a journey through a series of creative exercises to help them ideate and craft innovative concepts which were pitched at the end of the workshop. Some of these exercises included:
CREATIVE QUESTION helps teams formulate a specific challenge.
FUTURE SCRIPTING invites teams to envision “success” as one would want it to be featured on the cover of Time magazine 5 years from now.
TECHNOLOGY CARDS helps teams explore possible technologies that would enrich their concepts.
MAPPING helps teams draw scenarios an visualize them at city scale (with Lego, toys, photo collages, drawings…etc).
BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS helps teams quickly think about the business model associated with their concepts.