Caroline Baumhauer (she/her)
Growing up in France and Germany, I was drawn to the Master of European Designs, an international program that offered me the opportunity to explore various aspects of design. This program facilitated my transition from a conceptual approach in Glasgow to studying Interior Design at the Politecnico di Milano in Milan. In 2021, I had the opportunity to transfer to the École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle (ENSCI) in Paris to further develop my skills in the field of industrial design. During my final year at GSA I discovered my interest in strategic and conceptual design, as well as its collaborative approach.
Collaborative Future – Open Citizenship & Data Experiences in Glasgow 2032
Collaborative Futures Project: Collaborative Futures is a four-month design project in partnership with The Innovation School at The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) and the Centre for Civic Innovation (CCI) at Glasgow City Council. This year’s brief is titled– Glasgow’s Civic Futures: Open Citizenship & Data Experiences in 2032. It asks the question, “What if data-enabled experiences were embedded into our actual communities and neighbourhood environments of Glasgow in 2032?” Aims and Outcomes: The research carried out builds on the existing and ongoing design-led, citizen-centred approach already operating in the city. It looks to explore how the context of an open government strategy can create a joined up approach to scaling this across the city and informing democratic decision-making. It led to the project’s focus being around this core research question: “How might local government listen to, communicate with, include and inspire every citizen to participate? And what role might data play in this?” The project outcomes envision a future for Glasgow in 2032 that is more participatory and inclusive, that people would want to live and work in. Meaningful innovation is built on strong foundations. Hence, trust, inclusivity and transparency have underpinned the design of our future vision for Glasgow. They address the challenges of the current models of citizen participation and interaction with data. This future comprises three types of assets– emerging roles, places and tools, that bring ideas to life, and align to the council’s wider strategies over the next 10 years. A set of directions and recommendations co-written with the CCI suggest ways to achieve our envisioned future, and a roadmapping tool lays out the journey to get there in accordance with the strategies of the council. Journey to the Future: Every future vision needs a strategy of how to get there. We use a roadmapping tool to tell the story of how our project fits within strategies being developed across the city. Usually a roadmap lays a static path to the future, along a linear timeline. Since cities and plans are constantly changing, and at different paces, we structured our roadmap as a tool to build the journey to the future. It follows our design process and highlights how traditional ways of working can benefit from design-led innovation. So that risks are identified early, decisions are informed through learning, and plans can be scaled with confidence, creating cumulative impact at a systemic level.
CultureColab
Culturecolab – a framework based on participatory design to collaboratively design and shape a workplace culture.
Culturecolab is a phygital framework based on the Scandinavian approach to Participatory design, empowering employees to shape their own workplace culture. It builds on the inclusive and democratic principles, committed to foster a collaborative practice, which enables knowledge exchange as well as collective vision building. The framework does not represent a singular solution towards a workplace culture, but entails the preconditions to allow employees collaborate, communicate, and design a common future vision.
The proposal intervenes in three key moments of the Employee Experience: the hiring process, group meetings and the development review.
It responds to the issues of missing collaborative reflection on the organisational culture, tackling power structures and recurring bias during the hiring process.
The phygital toolkit guides the employees through a collaborative reflection around current values, behaviors and attitude, empowering them to question and redefine the organisational culture. Culturecolab introduces data portraits and visual mapping as principles to reflect and communicate internal skills and development goals. It also proposes a game theory-based approach to the hiring process to better understand the candidate’s personality and tackle bias during the candidate’s recruitment.
