
#DESIGNtoCHANGE Mo Husseini Gen City Labs BACKstage With Ruud Janssen
May 8, 2023
28:29
The BACKstage edition with Mo Husseini, (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohusseini/) Co-Founder & Chief Design Officer at Gen City Labs Designing the UX, Innovating the CX, and Creating the Web3 Future of Community Engagement in conversation with Ruud Janssen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruudwjanssen/ ) of the Event Design Collective.
Below you will find his responses to the #DESIGNtoCHANGE Worksheet on the #HORIZONSofCHANGE (also available at https://designtochange.online/worksheets/ ) :
* How do you involve others in the change you design for?
Mo-> - By asking questions... understanding the problems they have... and helping them articulate their vision of success before we start designing the way to make that change happen!
* How do the events you design become markers of change in your organisation?
Mo ->
I think that every project is an experiment... and like any experiment there are good results and bad results... The power of iterative improvement cycles is about focusing on the analysis of every experiment's results and taking away the lessons that move you forward as you iterate towards 'beautiful.'
* How do you have that conversation with your event owner?
Mo -> It's always about beginner mind with me: coming to every opportunity acknowledging that I don't know everything and working hard to dig deep to understand the problems that the event is trying to solve and the results you are trying to drive with the event. Honesty, curiousity, and a genuine desire to create something greater than the sum of its parts are what I bring to the conversation and I often find that this perspective is the best way to get people to partner with you as you help to design a vision for the future together.
* How do you enable them to express their vision?
M0 ->
Listening and rephrasing... most of the time people know what they want, they just don't necessarily know how to express it. A lot of my work is about taking information in, playing with it, and reframing it back for feedback. Engaging in an honest, open, and respectful conversation back and forth is the best way to hone the articulation and expression of a vision that everyone can actually get behind.
* How do you enable them to connect the vision to the event story?
Mo -> For me, there isn't really a SINGLE event story. If you'll excuse the analogy, I think of events as a choose-your-own-adventure game for the attendee. And what we do when we design an event well (in my opinion) is to build the environment and experiences that can allow many different kinds of people to build their own adventure through the experience and fulfill the needs that they have (for the event) in a way that also manages to get the "message" of the organizer across to the attendee. That takes a lot of deep, granular understanding of multiple personas, and journeys, and their needs and a holistic vision of an experiential symphony that can be experienced many ways
* How do you articulate the value it creates ?
Mo -> For whom? I'm not being glib... I really think that the value is something that the attendee has to co-create on some level... yes, there is an event that we create and design, but ultimately, every attendee will engage (or not) with that journey in ways that are unique and create a individual value for them. How good you are (as an organizer) at enabling that unique and personal journey and empowering it with experience design is what drives value for the attendee. And if you do it well, well then, you're winning :)
Link to Mo's site = https://www.mohusseini.com
Link to Gen City Labs = https://gencitylabs.io
Link to the new book "Harnessing Serendipity" featuring Mo and 654 other Collaboration Artists and Change Makers by David Adler =https://harnessingserendipity.com
Link to "DESIGN to CHANGE "" book = https://designtochange.online
