Lego Serious Play

Why & When

Lego can be a tool in a design thinking approch to prototype research ideas, haptically test setups and explore team settings and interactions. Originating in management, Lego serious play can be used in any sort of research setting, and is suitable for disciplinary design settings yet particularly helpful in transdisciplinary research modes. The strength of Lego serious play lies in group settings, where Lego can serve as a boundary object to allow team members to interact, allowing for a reflexive interaction. Plainly speaking, Lego is a toy that helps you in an initial research process.

Goal(s)

Lego serious play can be seen more as a way and not a goal. The goal can be bluntly put to enable people to interact about research. Research designs, workshop setting and the architecture of larger projects can be designed using Lego play. The goal to this end is not so much the final Lego model, but more the way that leads to it. Lego is playful, many remember it from childhood, and it can trigger people to challenge their assumptions. Through the haptic interaction are people enabled to interact more than if they would be just talking. The structure of Lego can help to structure the research. Lego can be this used as a catalyst for a team to develop research together.

Getting started

First of all, you need Lego. Personally, I think the Lego serious play sets are not really necessary. Instead, any collection of Lego will do, as long as you do not have a Lego expert who will be missing this specific piece from his childhood. Find a large table or a clean ground space (blanket?) where everybody can sit comfortably for a long time. Put the Lego in the center, and make it clear, that everybody an be equally engaged. Ideally, there is a moderator who only intervenes in times of crisis or may engage people by asking specific questions. The process is still often led by hierarchies, yet this should ideally be avoided. Here I present three approach show I used Lego in the past in research settings. The first example shows how Lego can be sued in a Team setting, for instance in management. A good starting points aim at three steps (following Kristiansen and Rasmussen 2014): 1) Get the knowledge from the room. Everybody should contribute their perspective, along other to understand their knowledge and perspective. 2) Construct a system. Try to bring the different parts of the knowledge together, thus people will jointly construct a model of the system, showing what is relevant and where connections and interactions are. 3) Linking the system and the individual

The second example builds on the creation of a research design for a larger project

The third example

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