In the second week of December 2019 the first activity of Find Your Talent, Work on Your Skills KA2 Erasmus+ project, the training course Human Centered Design, took place in Gent, Belgium. It was a great experience, not only for the learning, but also for all the cultural aspects that the village offered to the participants.
The training course was the first activity of our common project, coordinated by Avedan Welzijn, Netherlands, with the participation of organizations from Romania ( Imago Mundi Youth Association), Belgium, our host (iDrops) and Poland (Youth Act). The course unfolded between the 9th and13th of December 2019 and 20 participants took part.
It started pretty different from other training courses, not with a Getting to Know Each Other session, but with an energizer and an Energy lab. This way to structure was very appreciated by the participants, because they had time to know the others little by little, in time. The energy lab gave them the opportunity not only to work in teams, to express themselves in very creative ways, but also to get to know a little the environment. The challenge was to take a picture of something that can express what is that energizes you the best in your life, in your activity. A pretty interesting method, something to remember and to use sometime.
In the second part of the day, the participants have learned about the basics of Human Centered Design method. An world café about talent, how you discover it, how you improve it, how to use it, closed the day.
The second day was more about the presentation of the project, the big image, about iDrops and their very interesting projects. Kim Novak, the coordinator of the Dutch team, made a very conclusive presentation on talent, and Mark and Toby, also from Avedan, talked about the Open Badges, an innovative concept of CV.
In teams of four, using the 4 in a row exercise, the participants started to work on the HCD method, step by step: the creative research and the ideation. Every team created a persona, a character very detailed to help us prototyping.
The third day took the participants to Oostende, the end of the road, where we had the chance to meet other interesting people, with great projects – Arktos, O666. Then, the next step of the method: testing the prototype, thinking about our persona journey, her reactions and interactions.
In the fourth day another examples of this method were presented by iDrops – Studio Digital project. That gave the participants new ideas to use in their activity, in school and in NGOs.
The last day was about the social impact and the measurement tools, like the black box or the individual graphs. It was also about pitching. The evaluation session took the participants back on the streets of Gent, taking photos to express their appreciation and feelings. Again, a new way of doing things, and the circle closed very nicely…. And looking into the future, the participants also named some expectations for the the future training course that will unfold in Romania: a different approach that could be used by the partners, new and various methods that could lead to a guide.