About the Tool
A design charrette is a short, collaborative meeting during which team members quickly collaborate and sketch designs to explore and share diverse ideas.
The goals and benefits of design charrettes include drawing inspiration from diverse ideas, providing a creative jump-start for designers, gaining insight into priorities across various functional groups (while building consensus), and ensuring that all participants feel equally heard and valued.
Purpose: Ideation
Estimated Time Needed: 30 minutes
Target Participants or Users: Change Managers, Program Managers, Operations Managers, Planning Officers, Process Planners, Policymakers, Service Designers
How to Use the Tool
Steps:
- Using a pen and paper, each team member sketches their own ideas for 15 minutes, answering the challenge statement “How might we?” This is supposed to be fast. People may sketch one or several ideas until they run out of paper, ink, or inspiration.
- Each team member will be given 3 minutes to share their idea, which will be critiqued by team members.
- After the 1st round, the team members will work in pairs for 15 minutes to synthesize the good concepts and come up with the next better design concept.
- The pair will be given 3 minutes to share their idea, which will be critiqued by team members.
- Together, as a group, critique these new designs and make final decisions about the solutions you’d like to carry into prototypes.
Sample Activity
Sample Design Charrettes
- DOEE (2018). Integrated Design Charrette Toolkit. https://doee.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ddoe/service_content/attachments/DC-NZECharetteToolkit.pdf
- Project Re-Envision (2019). Design Charrette Report. https://pre.dcp.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/04122020-HUD-Re-envision_8x11.pdf