Identify opportunities

Enable participants to gather insights and reframe them as opportunities and challenges.

Preparation

15 mins

Delivery

15 mins

What is it

The "How Might We..." (HMW) technique dates back to the early 1970s, when Marino Sidney Basadur was working as a creative manager. By pushing participants to reframe insights into sentences that begin with "How Might We," it suggests that a solution is possible and that there is more than one way to approach a challenge.

The HMW practice fosters an open workshop environment. It enables collaboration by encouraging participants to share ideas and to defer judgement.

How to do it

1 Prepare the materials and work space

Find a clean, visible board to work on. Write "Wall of the Day" on top.

2 Brief the participants before experts speak

With presentation: Download the How Might We presentation ↓ and use it to introduce the HMW concept to participants.

Without presentation: Ask participants to write their thoughts down in the HMW format and to consider the following guidelines:

Write one HMW per Post-it
Bad example (too broad): "Fix consent issues"
Good example: "HMW make consent engaging and informative to invite deeper consideration?"

3 Gather and cluster Post-its

After each expert presentation, ask participants to gather all the HMWs they have written on Post-its. Work with your fellow facilitators to collect, group and re-group the Post-its by similar theme on the "Wall of the Day". Label the clusters with a representative title to make them easy to read. Facilitators can continue to organise Post-its while the next expert presentation continues or factor in a break for participants between talks so facilitators have time to accomplish this task.

4 Get inspiration

Remind participants to continually review the "Wall of the Day" during the Jam. This will spark creativity and prompt discussions within teams based on collective and individual insights.