Together with students from Kiron Open Higher Education for Refugees and students of the Integra Program for Refugees at HTW Berlin, University of Applied Sciences, we worked on the challenge: "How can we prototype a lab for women who live in the refugee accommodation of the mitHilfe GmbH in Berlin?"
For our Design Thinking Workshops, I booked the ballet hall of the gym at our university in Berlin Schöneweide and the amazing rooms of our Design Faculty. We all enjoyed the inspiring atmosphere of these rooms and the field research to the co-working spaces WE'RE ALL IN in Mitte and to the "Bett" in Schöneweide to get an outside view and to come up with ideas for the Women Lab.
Our project partner
As a part of the "Frauen iD" program, the project was founded by Paritätisches Bildungswerk Bundesverband e.V. The goal of this program was to strengthen the self-esteem and the self-learning skills of female refugees through cultural education programs.
Further project partners
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
HTW Berlin
Paritätisches Bildungswerk Bundesverband e.V.
Kiron Open Higher Education gGmbH
Kultur macht stark - Bündnisse für Bildung
mitHilfe GmbH
Our challenge was to change a container room of the refugee home of the mitHilfe GmbH in Berlin into a cozy and inspiring Women Lab.
According to the needs of the women from the refugee home in Lichtenberg and their own needs, the students came up with these model for the Women Lab.
Active listening is one of the most valuable skills a Design Thinker should have. I love to train this skill with my students. Therefore we went out to listen very carefully to the women and the employees in the refugee home of the mitHilfe GmbH who wanted to change the container into a Women Lab.
Sketching
After having coffee with the women and employees of the refugee home, we asked them to sketch their first ideas for the women lab on a canvas we had fixed on the table. The reason why we chose this method is that sketching visualizes ideas and helps a lot in the Design Thinking Process to understand the needs of the people you design for.
Become a keen observer and the Point of View
Back to the workshop room, the students collected all their observations, talked about their experiences at the container village, and defined the most important needs of the women by interpreting the sketches of the women. I like to work with sketches in my Design Thinking classes because people trust to express their deep wishes often much easier with a pencil than in words.
The needs
The students found out that there is a deep desire to have a safe place like a house where you can meet, talk, cook, sing, and dance or watch a film together, where you can learn with educational programs – digital and analog-, and where you can have a break outside of the room in a yard with trees and flowers to hear the birds. Also, there should be space for creativity like painting.
Leave the class room
To be inspired and to get an outside view, the students visited these two co-working spaces, the "Bett" nearby the University in Schöneweide and the "WE`RE ALL IN" in Mitte. From my point of view, excursions are one of the best ways to become a smart team. You share experiences and you have the occasion for informal talks. You will find the cozy atmosphere of the "Bett" and the carpet of "WE`RE ALL IN" again in the women lab the students prototyped. We thank Bett and WE`RE ALL IN" for their hospitality and their open-mindedness.
Transform a Ballet Hall into a Design Thinking Class
For working on the Design Thinking steps Point of View – Prototype, we transformed the Ballet Hall into a Design Thinking Class. This worked very well. The students started to become very creative, dance and have fun together. First, they collected the needs of the women in the refugee home of the mitHilfe GmbH they had interviewed, and afterwards they talked about their own visions for a women lab. Eventually they found out the most important needs and transformed them into demands for the design process.
Walk in the shoes of your personas
Firstly, one of the students drew three "personas" on behalf of the different types of women who would come to the women lab. Next, they collected the needs of these personas on a canvas which was fixed on the mirrors. Other students used ropes to define the space of the container for the women lab on the floor of the ballet hall based on the measurement they had taken during the field research to the refugee home.
Rough Prototyping
In the gym, the students found a lot of fancy material to build rough prototypes 1:1 after they had defined different "action spaces" for the future Women Lab with ropes on the floor.
Model: The Women Lab for the mitHilfe GmbH
Next, the students learned how to build the model for the women lab they wanted to present in the container room of the refugee accommodation of the mitHilfe GmbH in Berlin according to the needs and spaces they defined before.
This Women Lab prototyped by a cross-cultural group of students can inspire all who want to develop such a lab in the accommodations for refugees or for other women. The warm light inside, the wooden floor, the painted walls and the smooth and soft materials of the furniture create a welcome atmosphere. As far as I know, it is the first women lab in Berlin with a space for beauty. This might be an inspiration for future labs, even for business people in Berlin or elsewhere, too. In this way, Design Thinking and Intercultural Innovation leads to new business ideas.
None of the students were a designer or architect but they all became Design Thinker without fear to fall, full of empathy for each other. This is the power of the method Design Thinking. You win the game as a team. In this case, all were working for the goal of pleasing people who had lost nearly everything.
