How to Run Your Own Creative Digital Lab

By Fred Deakin

Identify your goals and/or line of enquiry

There may well be a subject or issue you want to explore, or a specific task you need to complete. Ask yourself what would be a successful outcome for this group of people? What would make them want to commit to this process? What are you trying to achieve together by the end of the lab?

Pick your time slot

What amount of time can people realistically commit to and how frequently can they meet? Be clear: they will need to devote 100% of their time to the lab during these sessions. No multi-tasking or last minute rescheduling – not with 14 other people involved. A sprint of five daily two-hour sessions for ideation followed by an offline production period and a delivery/reflection session a week or so later works well, but ultimately it’s your call. You may want to experiment with techniques such as blue sky thinking, rapid prototyping and theoretical models. The location of international participants may well dictate when your sessions will be, depending on intersecting time zones.

Plan breaks

Think about when you are going to schedule breaks and what form these will take. Stand up and stretch every half an hour? Break of 10 minutes every hour? Give people permission to leave and come back if they want to.

Enlist your participants

Between 9 and 15 people works well: more than 15 will be chaotic and won’t work in a digital space so subdivide if that amount is needed. Forward plan – make sure everyone is in a space with a reliable internet connection and let them know any basic kit they might need, like headphones.

If participants are likely to have poor internet, think about running Slack or WhatsApp  alongside the session, scheduling a phone call after to update, emailing documentation in advance or having an assistant facilitator on hand to help. Record the session to send afterward.

Identify access needs

You may need to adjust your plans to allow for different access requirements, like visual or audio impairment, internet access or sensory issues. Ask what adjustments people need in advance and research what is available via the technology you are using e.g. Zoom has built in auto captioning.

Set expectations

What can participants expect from this experience? What shouldn’t they expect?

Establish facilitation roles and rules.

Someone needs to lead on structure, deciding what the intention is for each session and making it happen. It can help to have an external person doing this: alternatively take turns to lead.

Who do you need on the facilitating team?

  • A main facilitator who is clearly in charge
  • An assistant facilitator if needed
  • A tech person to deal with problems (who can phone people in background or speak on Slack)
  • If possible, someone who is also taking the emotional temperature of the room
  • A note taker (one for each room if doing break outs) as these notes are a useful research output.

Agree well in advance what kind of structure would work for your participants, or brief and delegate the whole job to a trusted facilitator.

Choose Outputs

Many outputs are possible so choose what is most desirable. Examples include (but are not limited to):

  • a spoken presentation with or without slides and/or props (puppets are fun)
  • a short film, screened live to the lab
  • a PDF report to be digested before discussion
  • an online performance
  • a social media presence
  • a real-world offline project that is subsequently documented and presented to the lab

Divide and conquer

Come together to be briefed (very clearly!) on proposed activities, then split into three sub-groups (three is a magic number) to allocate, discuss and/or carry out the necessary tasks. When the lab comes together again, groups take it in turns to informally present their progress: this way each group has an audience (the two other groups) for their presentation.

Check-In and Check-Out

Do this every time, for everyone. Getting people to nominate the next person makes sure people have to concentrate throughout.

Reflection

Absolutely make sure you have time allocated for reflection and integration afterwards – the most important session!