“How Might We” Workshop
Inspired by the 5-day design sprint created by Google Ventures’ Jake Knapp, Business Society Technology will lead a rapid prototyping workshop modified for “event prototyping”. #
First, let me talk a bit about Business Society. Business Society focuses strongly on developing the skills of its members (in addition to providing networking opportunities and a community of support). One of the ways we practice skill development is planning major events on campus. Our signature Fall event is the annual Haunted House at UC Merced. Business Society is the only club that does a Haunted House (we’ve got a monopoly) and we have 1,000 unique attendees over three days.
Anyways, we have a huge problem. We don’t have a signature Spring event. In the past we have hosted a Casino Night because we have connections with the Jerry Yang, the 2007 World Series Poker Champion, owner of the Pocket 8’s restaurant in Merced. However, there have been problems with making this event our signature Spring event.
| Event Quality | Brand dilution |
|---|---|
| Quality standards have not been met | It’s an unoriginal event idea |
| Marketing efforts failed to mobilize large quantities of students like Haunted House | Other clubs also throw “Casino Night "events on campus |
| Poor time management and task distribution | Competing "Casino Night” events fail to garner attendance |
So that’s where you come in. #
We will be doing an event prototyping workshop focused on developing a Spring event.
Parameters: The event idea should be a quality large-scale event that is a few hours long and brings around 300+ attendees. I encourage you to begin brainstorming event ideas to bring to the workshop, because the best ideas are the ones made individually not democratically.
Budget: I suggest you focus on the event idea and execute a successful prototype of that idea, but it should be between $500 - $1,000.
Scoring: This activity is meant to encourage innovation and get the best ideas of its participants. Scoring will be more fair in this exercise but will still be a component.
“How Might We” Workshop Agenda: #
Part I: Prepare #
- Presentation 5 min
- Mindmapping 5 min
- Decision-making 5 min
Part II: Build and Present #
- Gamestorming 5 min
- Storyboarding 15 min
- Master Storyboard 5 min
- Presentation 10 min
Part III: Conclude #
- Silent Critiques 5 min
- Vote 5 min
Tips #
- Assign roles
Time will go by quick. Therefore, fast decision-making is important. Give certain people in your team the power to make final decisions especially if there are arguments on which way to do something. It may be smart to create a few final decision makers on different parts of the event prototype especially if someone is an expert in a field of interest like marketing/advertising, event planning, etc. At least designate a CEO/leader/boss.
- Make it understandable.
Again, time will go by quick. Do not spend valuable time making your illustrations look pretty. The main focus of illustration portion of the workshop is not to create final illustrations and print worthy comics, but rather it is meant to quickly convey your ideas with as few words as possible. If your illustrations can’t be understood on their own (i.e., they require lots of words or require a presentation to understand), then you will hurt your team’s scoring and will effect the overall quality of your illustrations.
- Don’t overthink it.
Yes you guessed it, time will go by quick. If you let the time constraints get to you, then this will be a stressful hour. So breathe, relax and don’t overthink it. This is meant to be a learning activity. Don’t try to put forward perfection, but do give it your best. At the end of the day, you created only a prototype. In software terms, it would be pre-alpha or maybe pre-pre-alpha (if that was an actual term). So don’t stress out about it.