playline

CASE

Despite their association with the Capital of Children and the Lego origin, Billund Kommune’s working culture does not differ much from any other municipality. How could we transform that serious environment in only six weeks by introducing play?

We joined the team in charge of the Playline for an in-company collaboration, one of the many projects in the municipality. As it not being a main project for any of the team members, the dedicated time was limited. This, together with the immense number and hierarchy of stakeholders involved, constituted the main constraints in the process.

SOLUTION

A series of playful interventions to collect, agree and decide on the project issues in the weekly meeting times. The methods, activities and tools, together with the generated knowledge, were collected in the Playline Toolbox for the future development of the project

PLAYLINE TOOLBOX

The Playline Toolbox is a collection of knowledge, methods and templates for the development of the Playline co-created with the project members. As the team has experienced the activities and agreed on the content, it aims to inspire and facilitate their future process. It is valid for ideation, conceptualization and activation of solutions.

The cards are divided in three categories:

• Codex: collects the knowledge and agreements reached during the interventions.

• Playful Methods: describes the methods that shaped the interventions and states their potential uses.

• Playline Templates: provides a QR code linked to the ready-to-print digital version of the templates used along the process.

PROCESS

For an in-company collaboration process with the members of the Playline team in Billund Kommune, we designed a series of tailored interventions to understand and set agreements of the values and needs of the project (see more about Playphonic here). In this way, we made sure the design, far from being imposed, belonged to the team and was integrated into their status quo.

The ideation and facilitation of the interventions responded to the specific needs of the team and the project at each moment. From a challenge board game to conquer the Playline to an autopsy of the project as a way to anticipate possible project barries, a sensorial experience to empathize with the user’s feelings, or a commandment writing session, among others.

Play allowed to push some of the barriers of their everyday work environment and facilitated the team to approach fearlessly some unfamiliar design methods. These interventions served not only as a better way to understand and think about the project’s values or needs, but also to strengthen the team’s laces.

IMPACT

In the collaboration time, Kommune’s workers transferred some of the methodologies and procedures they had experienced with us to other projects they took part in inspired by our interventions and suggested working culture.

About the Playline project, we know first-hand the team members have been working on the short and long terms agreed during our time at the Kommune and are actively using the Toolbox content in their meetings.