Here at 2nd Road, we create documentation of our facilitated conversations that we call Talkbooks. They consist mainly of annotated whiteboard printouts, text and diagrams. We give them to each of the workshop participants to help make the conversation (and decisions made therein) more tangible. Since conversation is our key tool for tapping into the intuition of a company’s leadership and making strategic decisions, we need everyone to be engaged, not taking notes frantically of all of the important things being said. The conversation is important because the groups talk about their situation and build an argument to get them where they want to go. However, the feeling of accomplishment that comes with this experience, can tend to wear off with the adrenaline, and the reality of the decisions sets in. At that point, helps to have the Talkbook to remind you of the decisions the team made.
In service design, this kind of thing is called an artifact of the service, and it is crucial to the client not just as tool for after the conversation, but the knowledge that it is being created is a luxury that helps participants let go of their desire to document all day, get out of their heads and contribute to the conversation. Knowing that a clear, useful document is being created is kind of like the happy feeling that I get in a hotel, knowing that someone else will be making the bed and ensuring that I have clean towels.
In my rambles, I found this other example of the instant documentation of another event. It is from the Lift conference and seems to have been published twice a day during a recent iteration of the gathering. It has very little of the synthesis of ideas in a Talkbook, but the use full color images provide visual synthesis in a potentially more engaging way than diagrams can. Add the use of big quotes, a fun font and even the naming, “Fanzine,” and this is a pretty engaging artifact.
