Design thinking and journalism — it’s a marriage that’s long been overlooked, but journalists often already apply design thinking principles (such as keeping your end user or audience in mind with everything that you do) without realising. And there’s much more to use that can help any production or project, at any time.
This workshop is an introduction to the Story Design Sprint, where participants will learn to see, adapt and apply design thinking principles in their projects and productions. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an editor, data journalist, photographer or designer, anyone will find this useful in their work, whether or not it’s in the field or behind a desk.
Are We Europe is a non-profit media collective driving cross-border journalism in Europe by working with a network of over 1000 creatives and journalists on a wide range of projects, as well as partnering with media organisations all over the continent. One of Are We Europe’s core ideas is that local teams and journalists are the best placed to tell the stories of where they live and that a combination of perspectives creates the best possible story. We first started running Story Design Sprints with a project called Edges of Europe, zooming in on overlooked regions at Europe’s borders, and chose Moldova as the first country.
We decided to adapt Google’s Design Sprint methodology, a process usually employed by product teams to quickly develop functionalities or new products for users, for storytelling. Four years later, we’ve travelled all over Europe, from Greenland to Georgia, bringing together local multimedia teams that produced a unique multi-format digital production in little over a week. Our Moldova story was nominated for the European Press Prize’s Innovation Award in 2019, and since then, many other organisations have partnered with us and applied the methodology for themselves. Our new project, The Circle, uses design sprints to start off new media hubs in cities across Europe, and we’ve also used design thinking to kickstart membership programmes, communication strategies and new TikTok channels.
Through this Story Design Sprint kickstart workshop, attendees will learn how to apply the methodology in their work or organisation.
Read more here.
Organised in association with Are We Europe.
