Next Chapter Design Challenges

September 24, 2011 in Blog, Challenge, Design by Laura Deisley

DESIGN CHALLENGES

The participants of Next Chapter have been split into three cohorts. Over the next two days, each cohort will explore and create a prototype for one of the following challenges.

COHORT A

Design a successful ‘unquiet’ library.

COHORT B

What must K-12 libraries do to spur continual innovation, to make libraries the places and spaces our learners crave going forward?

COHORT C

Like a city provides a park the people can use in the myriad of ways, how can the library of the future be designed like a park of possibilities?

Next Chapter: Crowd Sourcing and Ethnography

September 18, 2011 in Blog, Ethnography, Summit by Laura Deisley

The first part of the design process is called “discovery.” During this phase at Next Chapter, we want to collect information that will inform our work in the days ahead. It is really important that we have student voices, as well as voices that expand beyond the summit participants. So, we are going out to “the crowd” for some data.

What are we looking for?

We are looking for information about how people learn, where they go to learn, what they are interested in learning about, and who helps them learn. We’re really curious about ideas, behaviors and places/spaces that engage people in learning…and wondering if the library already is, or perhaps could be, designed as a place to do that. Or is library not a physical place? What is a library and what happens, or might happen there?

Some specifics:

Who the crowd is: students, teachers, family members, people on the street

What the crowd can tell us: the conditions and behaviors/interactions that create a great learning experience inside and outside of school.

How you can participate: Gather interviews/responses and get them to us by Wednesday, 9/21 midnight EST

Help us by asking the following questions of people you know or don’t know in your school, home, city:

1. Where do you choose to go to learn something hard? At school? At work? At home? Why? Can you describe that place, what is it like?

2. How do you find out about things you are interested in?

3. Where do you feel connected? To ideas, to people

4. What kind of things and spaces do you need when you are working on a project with friends?

5. What tools do you use to learn about something?  [books, phone, ipad, Google, wiki, blog, online)

6. How do you share your ideas? (write, paint, video, construct, present, perform)

7. Where do you go to create something? What tools do you need?

8. Where do you go if you are stuck and can’t find what you’re looking for? Or, don’t know if the information you have is accurate?

9. If you could design a space for learning that is this place we currently call “library” what would it look like? Who would be there? What would be there? How would people interact there?

10. In your mind, is the future of a library a “place”?

Help us collect their responses in any of the following ways:

1. Video interview (.mov file posted to YouTube with the tag “next chapter” and/or emailed to ldeisleyATgmail.com)

2. Audio interview/podcast (.mp3 file sent to ldeisleyATgmail.com)

3. Blog comment on this post

4. Twitter updates with the hashtag #nxtchp2011

Guidelines for the interviews (should you go that route):

Don’t ask a question to which someone could answer “yes” or “no”. We want to find out what people are thinking. You’ll also want to dig further than a simple answer, giving the interviewee an opportunity to expand his/her thoughts. We want to hear the story from them. So what types of questions should you ask? Where, how, what, when, who, etc. See the list above.

If you want to work on this with your students, here are some suggestions to them:

Go out in groups of 3 or 4, or at least in pairs. Assign tasks. You should have an interviewer, a note taker and a videographer / photographer.  Choose by who is comfortable doing what. Don’t be a paparazzi. Don’t put camera in their face. Do take nice full head shots, and make sure you have solid audio. Simple is better.

Approach people/groups by politely introducing yourself and your team and say that you’re working on a special project and would like to get their opinion and experience about how they learn.

Questions? Email Laura Deisley (ldeisley@gmail.com) and/or Jeff Sharpe (jeffsharpe@beplayfuldesign.com) of the Reimagine:Ed leadership team.

Image Credit

 

Next Chapter: Summit Design Challenges

September 17, 2011 in Blog, Summit by Laura Deisley

The event starts now.
Your voice and that of our broader community is critical to the success of Next Chapter. Therefore, we ask each of you to propose one or more design challenges or issues that impact your thinking about the future of your library or libraries in general. Think locally and globally.

We have established four categories to organize our thinking. We’ll assemble the challenges under each category and participants will vote on the challenges, narrowing them to three broad ideas that our cohorts will explore during the summit. We have provided some primers under each category to help frame them and guide your thinking, but remember your questions are not limited to these primers. The categories are:

Purpose: In what way will visitors benefit? Strategies for delivering the desired benefits? Strategies for the communication of the benefits? Sustainable organizations? Cultural transformations?
People: Consider internal and external constituents. What is the desired library experience? Skills required to provide desired experiences? How are the constituent relationships encouraged and nutured?
Things: The physical space? And the stuff in the space? Centralized? De-centralized? How does it transition from center of information to center of an ecosystem? What does it look like?
Behavior: How does the space act? What are the desired interactions within and around library? How does library support interactions?

For those of you who are attending, you may bring ideas with you as well!

Next Chapter: Summit Design Challenges

September 17, 2011 in Uncategorized by Laura Deisley

The event starts now.
Your voice and that of our broader community is critical to the success of Next Chapter. Therefore, we ask each of you to propose one or more design challenges or issues that impact your thinking about the future of your library or libraries in general. Think locally and globally.

We have established four categories to organize our thinking. We’ll assemble the challenges under each category and participants will vote on the challenges, narrowing them to three broad ideas that our cohorts will explore during the summit. We have provided some primers under each category to help frame the them and guide your thinking, but remember your questions are not limited to these primers. The categories are:

Purpose:    In what way will visitors benefit? Strategies for delivering the desired benefits? Strategies for the communication of the benefits? Sustainable organizations? Cultural transformations?
People:    Consider internal and external constituents. What is the desired library experience? Skills required to provide desired experiences? How are the constituent relationships encouraged and      nutured?
Things:         The physical space? And the stuff in the space? Centralized? De-centralized? How does it transition from center of information to center of an ecosystem? What does it look like?
Behavior:  How does the space act? What are the desired interactions within and around library? How does library support interactions?

Remember, of course you can bring some with you as well!

Next Chapter Design Challenges

September 16, 2011 in Summit by Laura Deisley

The event starts now.
Your voice and that of our broader community is critical to the success of Next Chapter. Therefore, we ask each of you to propose one or more design challenges or issues that impact your thinking about the future of your library or libraries in general. Think locally and globally.

We have established four categories to organize our thinking. We’ll assemble the challenges under each category and participants will vote on the challenges, narrowing them to three broad ideas that our cohorts will explore during the summit. We have provided some primers under each category to help frame the them and guide your thinking, but remember your questions are not limited to these primers. The categories are:

Purpose:    In what way will visitors benefit? Strategies for delivering the desired benefits? Strategies for the communication of the benefits? Sustainable organizations? Cultural transformations?
People:    Consider internal and external constituents. What is the desired library experience? Skills required to provide desired experiences? How are the constituent relationships encouraged and      nutured?
Things:         The physical space? And the stuff in the space? Centralized? De-centralized? How does it transition from center of information to center of an ecosystem? What does it look like?
Behavior:  How does the space act? What are the desired interactions within and around library? How does library support interactions?

Remember, of course you can bring some with you as well!

Enchantment. The August Design Challenge

August 8, 2011 in August Design Challenge by Ethan Bodnar

THE CHALLENGE

Imagine an enchanting place.
Imagine it as a library.
Now imagine an enchanting experience.
Imagine it as library. Library as verb.
What is your experience in this enchanted place called library?
Your students’ experience?
Your colleagues’ experience?

SUBMIT

Share with us what makes each experience, each moment, an enchanted one in the Library of the Future. Put each user, each patron, under the spell of library.

Submit any one or more of the following:
Visual collage, 30 sec video, Voice recording, Narrative description of 300 words or less

Please submit below by leaving a comment.
Submittals are due September 9th Midnight EST.

All of the submittal will be archived and shared with the community on the Next Chapter website and at the National Summit in Atlanta September 23rd – 25th.

INSPIRATION

Guy Kawasaki talks of three qualities necessary for enchantment:
• Trustworthiness: The care for your client’s every need.
• Likability: Taking the time to know your client.
• Having a fantastic product and exceptional service.

To read more about Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment, click here.

We believe it starts with user-centered design. Sculpting the interactions and behaviors necessary for a rich human experience. Scripting them, describing the sensory experience – what you ‘see’, what you ‘feel’, how you ‘interact’ – combined with mission and ethos these experiences are the ingredients of the magic of library. Crafting culture, service, brand and the environment.

What Librarians Think

June 14, 2011 in May Design Challenge by David Bill

Last month we asked a number of experts from different fields about their tagline for the future of the library and what it meant to them. In this second episode, we spoke to four librarians from around the country. Each librarian gave her tagline as well as some insight into a number of different topics that gave us a better picture of what they thought would be the future of the library.

We had the pleasure of interviewing:

Emily Dittmar from Minnesota
Beth Friese from Georgia
Sarah Levin from California
Susan Grigsby from Georgia

Thanks for listening and we hope you find the podcast to be informative.

Play

Join the June Design Challenge

June 6, 2011 in June Design Challenge by Jeff Sharpe

Tell a Story.

Create a visual narrative that brings one of the nine taglines from the May Design Challenge slideshow to life.

A movie. A Keynote. A screencast. A sketch. A collage. A Powerpoint. An animation. A comic.

However YOU tell a story visually.

In 30 seconds or less, capture the spirit, attitude and the vision of your favorite tagline for the Future of K12 Libraries.

Submit by midnight EST on June 25, 2011.

Initial review and judging will take place June 26th – 27th to select a shortlist of 10. The shortlist will be published at Next Chapter website in the Design Challenge section and the community of participants will be asked to vote for the top three. Final selection will be June 30th. All of the submittal will be archived and shared with the community.

Ways to Submit
Add your Vimeo or YouTube video link to a comment below.
Add your Flickr, Sribd, SlideShare link in a comment below.
Publish a blog post on your own site and share with a link in a comment below.

Or upload a file with the button below the comment form, once you select your file in the file browser and it goes back to the post wait a couple seconds and it will insert a link into the comment form, then just click Submit for the comment.

Have fun and inspire!

Celebrating Taglines from May Challenge

June 3, 2011 in May Design Challenge by Ethan Bodnar

Tagline Challenge Podcast

May 31, 2011 in May Design Challenge by David Bill

May brought the start of our virtual challenges. In this month’s challenge, we asked:

“What is the tagline for the future of  the library?”

We collected your responses in the form of tweetsFacebook wall posts, and blog comments.

In addition to your contributions, we interviewed a number of experts for our first podcast, asking them the same question.

In the podcast, which is available below, we interviewed experts from the worlds of libraries, education, and architecture.

Our contributors included:

Enjoy the podcast and let us know what you think of their interpretation of the future of the library.

Play
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