Improv for Design Thinking: Tools for Ideation

Unlock your creative potential through improv!

Kiln Theater, BOULDER, CO: Tuesday, October 26th, 4:00-5:30pm - FREE / donation

Get your creativity flowing, have some good laughs and learn through experience why improv is a proven and effective tool for the Design Thinking process!

Description

Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that transforms the way you develop products, services, and organizational processes. It is a process that requires you to push past the obvious to come up with creative, imaginative ideas and solutions.

But HOW do you push past your cognitive boundaries and thought limitations to achieve outside-the-box thinking?

Develop an improv mindset.

This workshop will help you do just that.

Together, we will explore a unique and effective approach to the ideation phase of Design Thinking: improvisational theater. You will learn how to incorporate and apply improv philosophy and techniques to Design thinking by playing engaging improv games with like-minded professionals.

What does the research say?

According to Dartmouth Engineering Professor, Peter Robbie, “the quickest and smartest folks at the brainstorming phase of design have been those who do stand up and improv”. His impression is backed by an MIT study that concluded:

• Improv comedians produced 20% more product ideas and 25% more creative product ideas than product designers familiar with traditional ideation methods

• Putting participants through just one improv comedy workshop increased idea output on average by 37%

• The ability to quickly generate many ideas (quantity) is correlated with being able to come up with a single, promising, creative idea (quality)

How does improv help Design Thinking?

Improv theater tenets and techniques strengthen design thinkers’:

• Divergent and outside-of-the-box thinking

• Collaborative team dynamics

• Active listening and wholistic communication skills

• Open mindedness

• Empathy

• Comfort, trust, and confidence to share ideas

• Willingness to take risks

What do great improvisers and great design thinkers have in common? They’re good at…

• Fast thinking in a high-pressure environment

• Knowing how to build on ideas rather than shutting them down

• Deferring self- and group-judgement to facilitate creative thinking

• Empathizing deeply and understanding perspectives outside of their own

• Creating a positive, open-minded collaborative environment most conducive to team creativity

• Listening actively and without judgement

To learn about the instructor, keep scrolling.

Questions? Contact Stephanie at steph@improvconnect.com.

About the instructor:

Stephanie Jones is the Founder and Chief Improviser at Improv Connect, which provides applied improv workshops for non-performers, delivers customized business and nonprofit trainings, and works directly with clinicians in variety of fields to integrate the magic of improv comedy into intervention strategies.

She works with therapists, corporations, individuals, and social impact organizations to integrate improv theory and practice into their work and their everyday lives.

Stephanie draws on a variety of experiences and areas of expertise to inform her practice:

Improv Comedy: A Boston native, Stephanie has frequented the stages of ImprovBoston and ImprovAsylum. During her eight years in Chicago, she trained and performed with various casts and house teams at iO Theater, The Annoyance, and Second City. Stephanie has performed and led workshops in places both near and far, from the U.S. to Tokyo, Japan! Now in Denver, she continues to perform and teach at Rise Comedy.

Speech-Language Pathology: Stephanie earned her M.S. in Speech, Language and Learning from Northwestern University. After graduating, she provided speech-language pathology (SLP) services to clients of all ages. During her time as a therapist, she applied improv to many aspects of her work, including: play-based pediatric intervention, parental play training, social pragmatic language intervention; age-related cognitive decline therapy; and training for new SLPs and graduate students.

Software Engineering: Observing the benefit of integrating technology with clinical work, Stephanie became a software engineer. After teaching at a coding bootcamp and working for tech startups, she is currently working with companies on team-building, collaboration, idea generation, and public speaking workshops for startup founders and employees.