Lab & Workshop Tools
A collection of Systems and Design Thinking Tools we have developed. These get adapted and remixed for specific labs and workshops we steward.
Process & Stewardship Tools
Social Innovation Lab Field Guide
A handy, all in one place, guide to stewarding social innovation labs by Ben Weinlick and Aleeya Velji.
One Page Profile
A tool you can use to help groups get to know one another. This activity prompts people to share a little bit about themselves, surfacing their values, skills, and things that support them to do good work.
Team Charter
A one pager that can be used by teams to surface and converge on a shared vision and values for working together.
Action Lab Agreement
An agreement teams can use when collaborating.
Human Centred Design Cycle
A visualisation of our version of the human centred design cycle.
Empathy & Exploring Systems Tools
Iceberg Model Poster
A poster that can be used to guide an iceberg analysis exercise surfacing the patterns, structures, and mental models that lie beneath events. Learn how to use this tool in this link from Think Jar Collective.
Key Insights Card
A card lab participants can use to identify key insights the ‘empathy’ and ‘define’ stages that should be considered when creating potential solutions. Created by Think Jar Collective.
User Persona Profile
A template to help bring a user persona to life highlighting their story, key demographics, hopes, needs, and wishes.
Summarizing Insights from Research Workbook
A step by step guide for lab participants gathering insights from research in the ‘empathy’ stage of the human centred design process. Created by Think Jar Collective.
Summarizing Insights from Interviews Workbook
A step by step guide for lab participants gathering insights from interviews with stakeholders in the ‘empathy’ stage of the human centred design process. Created by Think Jar Collective.
Map of an Experience Journey Canvas
Empathy Map
Questions to guide an empathy mapping excercise.
Behaviour Change Cards
A booklet that succinctly summarizes 9 principles to support behaviour change. This was created in Shift Lab 2.0 and used as part of the theory of change framework that underpinned the lab.
Shift Journey Canvas
Exploring the Challenge & Creating Interview Questions Workbook
A step by step guide for lab participants preparing to interview stakeholders in the ‘empathy’ stage of a human centred design process. Created by Think Jar Collective
Theory U & Four Levels of Conversations Posters
Rich Picture Canvas
Ideation Tools
Ideation & Prototyping Workbook
A step by step guide to ideating and prototyping created by Think Jar Collective.
Sticking, Puzzling, Promising Canvas
A tool that can be used by participants to sort insights.
Ideation Canvas with Jumping Off Points
Canvas to support ideation with four prompts. Created by Think Jar Collective.
Insight Organization Poster
Often in our labs we use a tool like this one to support teams in ‘bucketing’ or sorting insights gathered during empathy and systems explorations.
Three Horizons Canvas
This canvas is a tool developed during our Future of Home lab. We used it to help teams sort ideas across the three ‘horizons’ of innovation.
Prototyping & Testing Tools
Pitch Poster
This canvas supports lab participants in mapping and visualizing their prototype idea with a series of prompts.
Make Your Ideas Visual Canvas
5 service mapping canvases used to help teams prototype - creating space for them to visualize and ‘iron out the details’ of their scrappy ideas.
Prototype & Evaluation Workbook
A step by step guide lab participants can use in visualizing and testing their prototype with others. Developed in collaboration with developmental evaluator, Mark Cabaj, and adapted from Think Jar Collective’s work.
Example Reports & Deliverables
Primer Documents
Building a primer is often one of the first things we do when starting a new project. Our Primer Documents help anchor teams and typically summarize our approach; research on the topic being explored; and promising, best, and next practices. Below you can view three example Primers from past projects.
Future of Home Primer
This is an example Primer from the Future of Home Lab.
Shift Lab 2.0 Primer
This is an example Primer from Shift Lab 2.0.
Challenge Briefs
Challenge briefs bring together the approach, challenge being explored, the most pertinent context, and things to keep in mind while exploring in a succinct way. Below you can view example challenge briefs from past projects.
Future of Home Challenge Brief
This is an example of one of two challenge briefs created for our Future of Home Lab.
Design By Doing 2.0 Lab Brief
This lab was collaboratively stewarded with the Bhutanese community, a small refugee community in Edmonton. Unfamiliar with social innovation approaches, we worked with them to co-design and culturally adapt the process and then describe it in plain language.
Final Reports
Our final reports look different depending on who the audience is and what reporting requirements exist. To the right you can view example final reports from past projects.
Future of Home Final Report
An example final report from our Future of Home Lab. In this Lab we experimented with breaking up our deliverables into ‘bite sized’ pieces aimed at specific audiences rather than including all the content in one larger report document. This short document provides a hyper linked table of contents for all deliverables created in the lab.
SHIFT Lab 2.0 Final Report
An example final report from SHIFT Lab 2.0.
Design by Doing 2.0 Final Report
An example final report from Design by Doing 2.0 where we collaboratively co-created and culturally adapted the social innovation process with the Bhutanese community.