This thesis is the result of a graduation project that researched the field of Visual Thinking and facilitation in collaboration with Flatland Agency. Flatland is a design consultancy that facilitates co-creation sessions to overcome complexity in groups. Flatland has existed for
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This thesis is the result of a graduation project that researched the field of Visual Thinking and facilitation in collaboration with Flatland Agency. Flatland is a design consultancy that facilitates co-creation sessions to overcome complexity in groups. Flatland has existed for 9 years and their service has moved from graphic recording to facilitation of co-creation sessions to create and activate strategies visually. The professionalisation of Flatland’s services has resulted in a need to redefine their service offering. However, Flatland’s growth has resulted in an increased variety of projects and project outcomes. Flatland indicated that a more explicit and systematic approach to session design could help to support their methodology. Such a systematic approach could support Flatland’s methods as proof of concept. Thus, the initial aim of this project was to: develop guidelines to help Flatland design and facilitate their co-creation sessions more deliberately. Qualitative research of the context of Flatland showed that Flatland’s facilitators are designing every session anew and completely based on their own experiences and knowledge. Besides, Flatland’s facilitators have different focus points when designing for the same context. Moreover, Flatland is not sharing knowledge structurally about the core of their business, facilitation, and session design. Thus, these insights identified a threat of knowledge scarcity for Flatland. This means a potential loss of the company’s capital will occur when facilitators leave the company without sharing their unique knowledge with other facilitators. To overcome this threat sharing knowledge is crucial. A reframe is proposed to overcome this threat. Thus, the central aim of this project became: Design a reflection process for Flatland in which their creative facilitators (and designers) can iterate on their visual thinking session design and tools, to enable a more deliberate design approach to Flatland’s sessions. A structured reflection process is designed based on literature on reflection and helps to overcome the threat of knowledge scarcity of Flatland. This reflection process supports the facilitators and designers of Flatland in creating tangible insights from their session in order to share this knowledge about facilitation with other colleagues. By doing so, the facilitators become aware of the variety of facilitation styles, and their benefits. The threat of knowledge scarcity can be resolved if all facilitators know the Flatland’s different session design approaches. The design of this thesis consists of three parts: the structured reflection process, an implementation strategy for this process and two reflection tools. The implementation strategy is designed to ease the reflection process into the Flatland’s way of working. It starts with an awareness campaign to make Flatland aware of their lack of sharing knowledge about facilitation. The first tool is a reflection template that is designed to make Flatland go through a full reflection cycle. The second tool is an explainer that is designed based on the literature of Visual thinking, facilitation, and co-creation. This explainer aims to create a shared language for Flatland’s reflections. The awareness campaign and the reflection tools are validated with facilitators and designers of Flatland.