The Joint Research Centre

Case
JRC lab
 

Providing consultancy services supporting the foresight activities of the EU Policy Lab.

The EU Policy Lab of the Joint Research Centre (the JRC), the European Commission's science and knowledge service, has developed a set of tools and a knowledge management base to develop a systemic and future proof methodology in the context of policy making. Namahn is supporting the JRC in the conception of these tools and in their visual representation. This support happens mainly in the form of a number of scoping and co-creation workshops.

Approach

First, Namahn provided a one-day training session in systemic design to the JRC core team members. In this training session, Namahn presented the systemic design toolkit: a number of workshop tools and a structured process to engage different stakeholders in the analysis and design of societal issues.

Next, Namahn provided support in a number of separate projects:

Young leaders: Namahn participated as a visual scribe to the Young Leaders participatory workshop and created a visualisation of the results into posters and cards to be used in the EDD brainstorming session on June 15 2016.

Young Leaders scribing

For-Know: the JRC is conceiving a foresight knowledge-management (FOR-KNOW) tool that aims at developing systematic understanding and diversified readings of future trends and drivers shaping our society, to feed the policymaking cycle with anticipatory knowledge in a quick and responsive manner. The JRC and Namahn collaborated in the definition of a structured process and of tools to engage the different stakeholders in the various phases of the policy making cycle.

For-Know pilot session with foresight experts

Share NL: Namahn participated in a 2-day scoping/co-creation meeting to explore possible collaborative solutions to community challenges through a tool or game. On the second day, a paper prototype of the game was developed.

For-Know trend card

Result

The scoping sessions in the different projects were set up as co-design sessions with different stakeholders in the Namahn Design Studio, applying tools from the Namahn systemic design toolkit.

Young Leaders: after scribing the Young Leaders session, Namahn produced 4 posters of the global trends and challenges and a set of cards representing the actions that were identified during the Young Leaders session.

For-Know: after having identified a first set of 18 potential trends and associated drivers, the JRC and Namahn collaborated to make a first draft of the process and tools to engage stakeholders in the policy making cycle. The JRC and Namahn tested the first two steps with policy makers and foresight practitioners, and created a knowledge base and a project blog to advocate the tools and gather feedback about their usage.

For-Know trend card

ShareNL: the JRC and Namahn held a two-days scoping workshop to examine how the current tools of the JRC lab and shareNL could be merged and further developed into a board game. After the meeting Namahn elaborated a design brief and plan to develop the tool.

ShareNL board game