Second Co-Creation Workshop in Lisbon

Date: 16 February 2022

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

The second co-creation workshop for the Lisbon pilot took place in Room A at the City of Lisbon Foundation, on Wednesday, 16 February from 9:30am to 13.00pm.

The second co-creation workshop for the Lisbon pilot took place in Room A at the City of Lisbon Foundation, on the 16th of February. 20 participants attended the workshop in total, 14 of which were men and 6 were women.

One week prior to the workshop, preparatory materials and the consent forms were sent to the confirmed participants. To ensure that everybody was aware and well prepared for the session, they were asked to think in advance and to take note of short answers to the core challenge of the workshop:

if you had at your disposal computational processing power, analytics for large volumes of data, and storage capacity, what relevant knowledge, resources and contacts would you make available to help the city of Lisbon to increase: i) energy efficiency in residential and service buildings; and ii) its number of photovoltaic solar installations?

The 1st part of the session began with an introduction of the overall workshop agenda and AI4PublicPolicy concept, goals, and Use Cases and respective datasets, including a short video about the 1st workshop. Afterwards, a round of introductions by the participants took place, followed by a “What do we have in common?” ice breaker.

The 2nd part of the session corresponded to an adapted “Brainstorming” method. In this exercise, the group was seated in chairs arranged in a U shape, and a token (a basketball plush toy) was passed on from one person to the other. The person with the token was the only one allowed to speak to share briefly one of his/her ideas to the challenge proposed, and to write it in a post-it that was collected and pasted on the “solar energy” or the “energy efficiency” white board. At each new round, it was possible to contribute with new or to build on previous ideas, or to say “I pass” if none occurred. As soon as the poll of ideas went dry, the brainstorming was finished. The ideas collected during the Brainstorming helped to set the scenario for the following dynamics and type of solutions to be pursued during the group ideation moments. They also helped the participants to choose the peers they wanted to join for the Shark Tank.

In the 3rd part of the session, the participants formed groups of 5 people each, to develop autonomous work assisted by the moderators when necessary. Each group was instructed to come up with a solution to the challenge proposed – it could be a product, a service, an initiative, an infrastructure, etc. – based on the ideas collected during the brainstorming. During the group ideation, a 3-minute pitch of the solution was prepared, following the structure:

  • “What?” – the product / service / initiative
  • “How?” – the functionalities / processes /methods
  • “Who?” – the user / target audience

The peers were allowed to discuss after each pitch, and to state their “investment” in the solution of the presenting group. In the end, the groups reviewed their bids and the solution with greatest potential was selected.

The session was closed in the 4th part with a round of feedback by the participants, and acknowledgments by the moderators.

The overall degree of satisfaction with the workshop obtained through the questionnaires (20 completed) revealed that 12 participants were Very Satisfied, and 8 were Satisfied. The contributions from the participants helped to identify additional variables and perspectives to consider, other possible sources of information, and eventually new datasets to look for. In this sense, we were able to consolidate the Use Cases with greater potential and priority User Stories identified throughout the session.