Enable Berlin is a fast, intuitive, interdisciplinary Design Research Process to reflect future trends and opportunities. It is about enabling users to find solutions to social challenges and their own needs, within a framework created and guided by professional designers. Its source is the Open Design & DIY movement in an international creative community in Berlin.
Enable Berlin stands for design by non-designers. In an conventional design process, ideas are based on market research, through surveys or focus groups, giving designers some insight on how a product or service should be designed. The creative insights from non-experts are key for the design process of Enable Berlin. Natural knowledge of one’s true needs, the idea based on own experience of how to improve an existing system is what counts.
A group of around 20 non-designers is invited to tackle a challenge submitted by a local organization, a business, or some hot topic of the moment. The facilitators make use of their designer’s know-how to formulate a situation-specific problem or persona. They are coordinating a group brainstorming, assist with prototyping and presenting, provide specific knowledge to make projects realizable, and keep an eye on the time.
By the end of an Enable session there have been a few thought-through solutions developed and many more basic concepts unveiled. All have something in common: they are not what designers would have thought of, they address real needs based on first-hand experience. Each Enable session is entirely video-documented. The edited film gives a clear view of the research and design processes, as well as the prototyped outcome, and is published under a creative commons license.
In the interdisciplinary team of project facilitators, designers, photographers and film-makers, journalists, visionaries, Vanilla Way is taking care of business development, external communication with potential clients and partners, development of advertisement materials as well as supporting internal communication and conceptual work.
