Learning Lab with UsTwo

Learning Labs are Hyper Island’s way of bringing together a new group of people to meet Hyper Island, meet industry, and share and learn together. Lawrence Kitson from UsTwo has been heavily involved in the design of the new Digital Experience Design MA and I teamed up with him to design a Learning Lab that we hoped would inspire and teach the attendees something new.

In the beautiful Hoxton Hotel in London, we welcomed 40 folks to spend a couple of hours with us to listen, learn and do. The group was made up of graduates, students, designers and developers from design, UX, marketing and advertising agencies. As well as some lovely Snook and Hyper Island alumni.

The night began with an introduction to Hyper Island, we talked about where, why and how it all began as well as how we work and why we work the way we do. I shared Snook’s story and talked about projects like The Matter, Know Sugar and Cycle Hack.

Lawrence talked about UsTwo and let us see inside their business model, their culture and their projects - brilliant stuff.

We set the group a challenge to redesign a broken service and introduced them to two core service design tools: journey mapping and prototyping. The teams came up with a diverse range of experiences to improve:

Reporting a stolen bike

All inclusive holidays

Train delays

NHS test results

Booking an appointment with your GP

Personal ID cards

They then brainstormed solutions and prototyped their ideas. I talked about the new programme, shared the principles behind it and details on the course content. You can find out more about that here.

We ended the evening with a “check out”. This is a core methodology we use at Hyper Island to mentally connect with each other and the experience we’ve just had. The energy in the room was amazing and we all left with big smiles on our faces.

A snapshot of some of the check outs:

"I wish my work was going to feel like this tomorrow” “I feel enlightened and inspired” “When’s the next one?” “I feel hopeful about the future again”

Thank you to everyone who came for your energy, curiosity and laughter. If you’d like to get together to host a Learning Lab at your business, school or place of work drop me a line.