EU-MACS Coordinator: Prof. Adriaan Perrels, forename.surname@fmi.fi
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The methodology starts with a short introduction presentation explaining the history behind Lego Serious Play and the reasons why the methodology is so powerful. While built on playing with Lego bricks, the methodology is also serious play, and the results that can and have been attained through this methodology need to be explained first for participants to understand it’s seriousness, and to keep an open mind.

Once convinced that playing with Legos is worthwhile, the participants must acquire a few skills to be able to follow the process: (1) technical: often combined with a team-building or introductory activity, in the technical skills building participants familiarize themselves with the available Lego bricks and build their first model.

(2) metaphors: a few simple bricks may represent many different things. It only takes two crossing bricks in the same configuration to represent an airplane, a scale, a bridge, a cross and so forth. Now this assembly may also represent travel, freedom, flying, weight, justice, connections, moving forward, religion, faith, belief and so forth. With a little bit of imagination, Lego bricks can thus represent anything you want them to. (3) story telling: mastering the art of metaphors, participants can now build stories around their models. Stories allow the builder to reflect and to expand on their initial thoughts through dialogue.

After the introduction and skills building exercise, the participants were guided through a structured problem-solving process, where a challenge was presented in the form of a question, participants were given a set period of time to build their answers to the challenge, each participant was allowed to share and reflect on their model and story.

The exercise focused on finding the different types of information needed by the different quadruple helix stakeholders, as well as ideating on the types of climate services that could be created to answer these needs. When arriving to discussions about the citizen’s role the groups were divided to consider four specific types of potential users: house owners, commuters/travelers, farmers/gardeners & environmental activists. These four user groups were identified through previous sessions (see guideline 2: citizen involvement). The final results were synthesized in the form of a debrief report, outlining the types of information, types of services, and design principles for the design of the services, for each individual stakeholder.

The last step in the workshop was to consider the costs and benefits related to climate services from the different points of view. In this section the “six thinking hats” methodology was used to consider the problem from six different points of view: (1) benefits (2) problems (3) planning (4) ideas (5) emotions (6) facts.

PARTNERS AND THE ADVISORY EXPERT COMMITTEE

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