LearnLab
Blending the best of human-centered design, agile and design sprints into a structured approach for rapidly exploring new opportunities, big and small.
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Innovation design and delivery.
LearnLab is our unique approach to structuring innovation programs. It combines the power of design thinking, Agile and Google Design Sprints into a structured process that allows teams to rapidly experiment and develop divergent solutions to complex problems.
LearnLab is both a process and a toolkit. The implementation of LearnLab involves working with your leadership team to define strategic focus areas, before working with champions and the wider organisations to build capability to self-run LearnLab iterations.
The methodology emphasises establishing a robust structure for innovation; capturing of lessons learnt along the way; and the rapid testing of solutions to generate immediate results.
A structured approach to experimentation.
The double diamond is a proven approach for creatively solving complex problems and uncovering unmet needs our experiment process utilises the double diamond combined with principles from google design sprint and design thinking to provide a structured approach to experimentation.
It combines the certainty of clear stage gates and expected outputs with the freedom of divergent and convergent self directed sprints the intersecting pink and blue lines of the diamonds highlight the continual combination of internal and external collaboration and co-design throughout the process.
The learning labs teams role is to facilitate this process but to do so in a way that experiment teams are self guided with just the right amount of support and autonomy.
The experiment process adapts to the opportunity at hand.
When it comes to solution discovery and experimentation the process cant use a one-size-fits-all approach.
The learning lab experiment process allows for agility of tackling opportunities of different complexities and sizes whilst providing a clear expectation of structure and outputs the experiment charter developed at the start of all experiment articulates how the sprint will run
The parts of the process that can be adapted to the experiment focus area.
- Team members: Each sprint will draw on different internal and external players to ensure the right combination of resources and expertise is in the room.
- Depth of co-creation: Some sprints may be require in-depth co-creation including customer co-design days or even hackathon style prototyping sessions other sprints may rely on interviews ethnography or even simply drawing on existing research
- Duration of each Sprint: The experiment process may be run as a rapid single day exploration of a small problem or a multi-week experimentation journey we expect the average experiment to run for 2 4 weeks with a maximum duration set for any experiment of 6-weeks.
- Guidance and autonomy: The learning lab support will support all experiments running through the lab however as capability grows the learning lab team may be able to increase the autonomy and reduce direct guidance for some experimentation teams.
The parts of the process that are consistent and rigid regardless of the experiment focus area:
- The stage gate and outputs: Every sprint will be expected to pause at each of the stage gates and to produce common outputs at each milestone for a 1day sprint stage gates could be a short checkins amongst the team whereas longer sprint would require structured workshops with identified stakeholders.
Building a toolkit as we go.
We've developed a unique platform built for adding rigor to experimentation LearnLab is a responsive web platform that will help the learning lab track their experimentation outputs codify their experimentation processes and support ongoing experimentation through self-serve content and resources.
LearnLab performs the following jobs for the Learning Lab team:
- Documentation of the experiment process including making explicit the activities outputs and stage gates for each step in the process.
- Centralised knowledge management of outputs and learnings from each stage in the experiment journey for example a summary of research insights a link to a prototype or sketch of a potential solution.
- The creation of a self-serve toolkit of routines and resources for experiment teams to access and learn from our current experimentation content already has 21 tutorials and 65 resources tools and templates featuring core experimentation skills such as empathy prototyping and research.
- Transparent tracking and reporting of the experiments being run in the learning lab including what stage each experiment is at.
Great hands-on virtual workshop with real life examples and fantastic free thinking opportunities while learning new techniques.
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Specialist - Product Development
I love attending SOMA events. I learn so much in a collaborative and friendly space and get to connect with other amazing professionals in a similar context. I always integrate things I've learned into my own practice. Every event has been a valuable experience.
Rebecca Loftus
Chief Ecosystem Officer - it's a thing, OK!
Nate and Matt produce consistently high quality content and deliver it with a friendly, natural style backed with a treasure trove of interesting real life experience. SOMA is an excellent way to keep up to date and interact with like minded people - I'm a lifer!
Mars D'Arcy
Principal Consultant
Really great workshop - lots of great concepts and tools illustrated that can be easily applied to immediately improve online facilitation.
Angela
Specialist - Continuous Improvement
That is one of the best experience sharing events in my life.......
Md Khairul Islam
PhD Student
The UWA IQ Academy by SOMA had a lot of very innovative and creative contents with great facilitation.
Bryan H. Wiratno
Student
Innovation design and delivery.
LearnLab is our unique approach to structuring innovation programs. It combines the power of design thinking, Agile and Google Design Sprints into a structured process that allows teams to rapidly experiment and develop divergent solutions to complex problems.
LearnLab is both a process and a toolkit. The implementation of LearnLab involves working with your leadership team to define strategic focus areas, before working with champions and the wider organisations to build capability to self-run LearnLab iterations.
The methodology emphasises establishing a robust structure for innovation; capturing of lessons learnt along the way; and the rapid testing of solutions to generate immediate results.
A structured approach to experimentation.
The double diamond is a proven approach for creatively solving complex problems and uncovering unmet needs our experiment process utilises the double diamond combined with principles from google design sprint and design thinking to provide a structured approach to experimentation.
It combines the certainty of clear stage gates and expected outputs with the freedom of divergent and convergent self directed sprints the intersecting pink and blue lines of the diamonds highlight the continual combination of internal and external collaboration and co-design throughout the process.
The learning labs teams role is to facilitate this process but to do so in a way that experiment teams are self guided with just the right amount of support and autonomy.
What you will learn
The experiment process adapts to the opportunity at hand.
When it comes to solution discovery and experimentation the process cant use a one-size-fits-all approach.
The learning lab experiment process allows for agility of tackling opportunities of different complexities and sizes whilst providing a clear expectation of structure and outputs the experiment charter developed at the start of all experiment articulates how the sprint will run
The parts of the process that can be adapted to the experiment focus area.
- Team members: Each sprint will draw on different internal and external players to ensure the right combination of resources and expertise is in the room.
- Depth of co-creation: Some sprints may be require in-depth co-creation including customer co-design days or even hackathon style prototyping sessions other sprints may rely on interviews ethnography or even simply drawing on existing research
- Duration of each Sprint: The experiment process may be run as a rapid single day exploration of a small problem or a multi-week experimentation journey we expect the average experiment to run for 2 4 weeks with a maximum duration set for any experiment of 6-weeks.
- Guidance and autonomy: The learning lab support will support all experiments running through the lab however as capability grows the learning lab team may be able to increase the autonomy and reduce direct guidance for some experimentation teams.
The parts of the process that are consistent and rigid regardless of the experiment focus area:
- The stage gate and outputs: Every sprint will be expected to pause at each of the stage gates and to produce common outputs at each milestone for a 1day sprint stage gates could be a short checkins amongst the team whereas longer sprint would require structured workshops with identified stakeholders.
Building a toolkit as we go.
We've developed a unique platform built for adding rigor to experimentation LearnLab is a responsive web platform that will help the learning lab track their experimentation outputs codify their experimentation processes and support ongoing experimentation through self-serve content and resources.
LearnLab performs the following jobs for the Learning Lab team:
- Documentation of the experiment process including making explicit the activities outputs and stage gates for each step in the process.
- Centralised knowledge management of outputs and learnings from each stage in the experiment journey for example a summary of research insights a link to a prototype or sketch of a potential solution.
- The creation of a self-serve toolkit of routines and resources for experiment teams to access and learn from our current experimentation content already has 21 tutorials and 65 resources tools and templates featuring core experimentation skills such as empathy prototyping and research.
- Transparent tracking and reporting of the experiments being run in the learning lab including what stage each experiment is at.
Book for your team
Book for your team
Get in contact
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