Newsletter, Third Edition, June 2015
FP7-ICT-2011-8-318536
Introduction
This edition of the COLLAGE Newsletter is dedicated to the different Summative Evaluations
of the COLLAGE tools and services which are taking place.
The summative evaluations are nearing completion at all three application partners: Waag
Society, CEDEP and FIAT.
At Waag Society the COLLAGE
tools and affinity space have been
tested on a series of design and
concept development projects by
Waag staff and collaborators.
At CEDEP and INSEAD the
creativity tools have been
incorporated into some of the
executive education classes through
the GMP Tube platform.
And FIAT CRYSLER have used the risk-hunting app at the CNH factory in Basildon to
stimulate possible creative solutions to health and safety issues at the plant, as well as other
COLLAGE creativity and mind-mapping tools in training workshop scenarios at FIAT SEPIN,
Magneti Marelli and the Centro Ricerche Fiat.
The results will be analysed and fed into the Summative Evaluation report due in September.
Concept developers trial tools in their daily creative tasks at
WAAG Society.
D
uring the past months, Waag Society has been using the COLLAGE tools both in internal
and external settings. The following tools have been evaluated: StarQuest (previously
LogQuest), Hatparty, BrightSparks, Cruise++, and the overall Affinity Space in which all tools
come together.
Waag Society’s concept team –
consisting of seven designers with
various backgrounds – has been the
core ‘testing’ team. We tried to
integrate the tools as much as possible
in our daily routine of designing,
researching and tinkering. Testing is
not always fun, as we experienced. The
challenge of being the first ‘user’ of a
certain tool is that you encounter a lot
of flaws and malfunctioning, which should not stop you from continuing using the tools. That
said: seeing improvements made in functionality of a certain tool – based on your input – is
rewarding.
Our favourite tools are Hatparty and BrightSparks. These tools have been used by the entire
organization during the ‘Strategy day’ in April – headed by Meia Wippoo, one of the concept
developers. This was a nice opportunity to introduce the tools amongst the rest of our
colleagues. The open character of the two tools allowed our colleagues to use them in their own
projects as well!
Last week, the latest version of Cruise++ tool became available, which has been tailored to
Waag’s preferences. The trial for Cruise++ is still running. A glimpse behind de scenes: our first
impressions are positive.
Stimulating Creativity in Health & Safety Risk-Hunting and
Resolution.
C
NH Industrial’s current systems for occupational health-and-safety management and lean
manufacturing involve all of its employees in the detection, reporting and resolution of healthand-safety risks. To support employees to think more creatively in this risk detection, reporting
and resolution process, the COLLAGE project has extended it with support for creative thinking
about risk resolutions. More specifically, we applied current creativity research to extend a risk
detection and resolution process at the CNH Industrial plant with creativity techniques and new
digital support for the plant employees to use these techniques effectively as part of the risk
detection and resolution process.
The evaluation has taken place over a 3-month period in 2015 at
the CNH Industrial plant east of London, and involved the
rigorous analysis and comparison of the novelty and value of risk
resolutions generated in the plant with the existing risk detection
and resolution process and the new creative risk resolution process
with its digital support.
Employees using the app generated risk resolutions that contained
far more content, and were on average 5 times as long in terms of
word count, as the resolutions recorded with the original paperbased system
Initial results show that Health-and-safety experts from FCA rank the risk resolutions generated
by employees using the app as both more useful and more novel than the resolutions recorded
with the original paper-based system.
Assisting the creative process in the design and delivery of
training workshops within the FIAT CRYSLER group.
F
CA Sepin as applied partner is in charge of evaluating the COLLAGE tools and affinity
space within their organization context. The COLLAGE Affinity Space for FCA Sepin regards
typical business-driven workshop scenarios in which key-organisational users are supported to
find creative solutions to main business/organizational issues, solve problems and take decisions
collaboratively by use of ad-hoc integrated social creativity web-based tools. In this scenario
three typical use target users are involved: (1) the FCA Instructional designers/training
managers, who design the training and learning process and expected outcome(s) of the
appointed organisational workshop and/or seminar; (2) the actual trainer managers, who act as
moderators/facilitators in delivery of the appointed organisational workshop and/or seminar; (3)
the actual participants to the organisational workshop and/or seminar. As such, three use cases
are consequently applied. In use case A– the “Design” Phase 1) the FCA Instructional
designers/training managers are asked to address a business or organizational issue assigned by
one or more business leaders using collaborative problem solving processes. The FCA
Instructional designers/training managers will then make use of the COLLAGE tools either
individually and/or integrated in the Affinity Space to design the appointed organisational
workshop and/or seminar. In use case B – the “Delivery” Phase. The perspective and user
experience of the 2) actual trainer managers who deliver the appointed workshop and/or
scenario is considered. The FCA training managers act as moderators and facilitators of the
training/workshop development process. In this context the COLLAGE /Affinity Space will
support the training managers manage collaborative problem solving process with emphasis on
different processes (divergent thinking/convergent thinking). In use case C – the “Active” Phase
the perspective and user experience of the 2) participants to the workshop and/or scenario is
considered. In this context the COLLAGE /Affinity Space will support the users/participants to
achieve the workshop/seminar goals and collaboratively solve problems and take decision
regarding the organisational issues addressed.
Activity of COLLAGE dissemination has
raised interest in different work group
within the FCA group. Face-to-face and
remote meetings have followed to present
the project outcomes and tools more indepth. As a consequence of this, two
additional work groups from the MAGNETI
MARELLI company and CRF (Centro
Ricerche FCA) have declared the interest to
test the COLLAGE tools and Affinity Space within their organisational context. Workshops and
seminars organised in the FCA pilots have evaluated the effectiveness the COLLAGE Affinity
Space can have to enhance creativity and help explore different options, ideas, designs or
outcomes. To date 13 summative evaluations events have been organised, and qualitative /
quantitative data and overlooked user requirements have been collected and analysed to improve
the COLLAGE tools.
COLLAGE in the context of the executive education centre,
CEDEP
T
he Pilots related to CEDEP have been set up in the framework of Company Specific
Programs (CSP) aiming at validating and extending the insights into the adaptability of the
GMPTube Social Affinity Space (SAS) and two embedded tools: HatParty and BeCreative.
The first Pilots were conducted mostly with groups of managers attending courses open to
participants from different organizations, and a round of three final pilots will l focus on the
deployment of this COLLAGE SAS in a very popular form of management development,
namely company-specific courses (organized internally or by an external school / education
provider like CEDEP). In such courses participants are all belonging to the same company,
although they might not necessarily know each other at the beginning of the course. One of the
Pilots will enable the CEDEP/INSEAD team to deploy COLLAGE services in a 100% online
learning context.
The pilots involve over 130 participants from 36 different countries/nationalities, and are
generating insights in the three areas targeted.
The GMPTube SAS developed to support creative collaboration among distributed team
members involved in projects has revealed to be easy to adapt to different educational contexts
and for different groups, and can
support formal or informal connection
among the team members to engage in
collective intelligence dynamics like
brainstorming. BeCreative and
HatParty have proven to be useful
when dividing participants/learners in
Teams as well as with individual
players 100% online. Overall the
COLLAGE GMPTube SAS and the
Services to which the Pilot Participants have been exposed have demonstrated to have reached a
quality and reliability which makes them valuable in the eyes of demanding managers and
decision makers, and hence ready-to-deploy in real contexts, particularly to enhance current
approaches to management education in organizations and educational institutions such as
CEDEP.
THE COLLAGE SERVICE SET