Experimenting a new model: Blockchain Design

The starting point in my action research related to Blockchain happened to be through the following open questions. How will blockchain disrupt and transform sectors and organizations? How are organizations connecting with the user’s needs through Blockchain?  What are new patterns of behaviours and where do we see them and why are they emerging? What are the obstacles and barriers?

As there are no magic bullets and straight answers, I asked myself what I could do to investigate more on a practical level. Even though in most of my work I have applied the Design Thinking methodology, I decided to start a journey of observation, understanding and trying out an agile template for a mutual learning experience. The vision is to discover how to blend Blockchain and Design Thinking elements in organizations, society and individuals. The short-term goal is to run experimental iterative open workshops to engage the audience in open conversations and small activities dealing with a different paradigm.

Last Wednesday the collaboration with Nano labs and Gisma Business School in Berlin gave me the opportunity to launch my action research project: ‘Blockchain: A Postcard From The Future’.

The session unfolded with the challenge to raise awareness of the purpose and impact of Blockchain and to bridge it with some tools from Design Thinking mindset: visualization, user needs and iterative process. Explaining concepts like ‘distributed ledgers’, ‘smart contracts’, ‘nodes’, ‘consensus’ and ‘cryptography’ served as an initial glossary to introduce Blockchain from behind the scenes. The architectures, such as permissioned and permissionless networks, helped to clarify that Blockchain is not Bitcoin and vice versa.

Analogies and examples were lighthouses and immersed the participants into their own life experience, their emotional connections. The workshop gathered 18 people: young entrepreneurs, students and a few professionals.

I coached and facilitated three teams in a short final challenge…design your blockchain! There was an overarching curiosity in the room that created a momentum in the experiment to face a new paradigm based on elements, such as trust, transparency and ownership. The result of the participants’ work is inspiring and insightful to bring forward the project journey.

The value provided by the teams’ engagement and feedback will be improving my work and I am just thankful to them.

More than a year ago, when I had just finished reading ‘This Machine Kills Secret’, there was a stream of questions that led my curiosity to find out about Blockchain. Then I started my own research and pulling together notes from meet up events, books, articles and reflections related to this technology. When I decided to launch and create this experiment, I found slightly easier to connect the dots and push forward my curiosity and creativity to the next level of experimentation.

The new paradigm, based on what Blockchain is to solve, it is as insightful as Rosetta stone! There is a great opportunity to create new engagement between designers, innovators, tech leads and open source platforms.

This project called ‘Blockchain:postcard from the future’, shows an opportunity to embrace a new logic: Blockchain Design. While Blockchain will keep disrupting the whole economic and societal system, we need to start to invest in designing activities and agile educational programs in schools, universities and organizations to set up an exploratory approach related to Blockchain. There is no existing map, I am creating a new one through research design, collaboration, risk, failures and optimism. My aim is to contribute to facilitating the adoption of Blockchain technology to collaborate and research its impact through these three opportunities:

1. Reframe problem definition through empathy, awareness and understanding of potential Blockchain users and stakeholders
   2. Address the gap in the Blockchain know-how for businesses and technical audience, also for its final users
   3. Create experimental learning sessions to explore and discuss Blockchain impact using Design Thinking

“Lameness is an impediment to the leg, but not the will. And add this reflection on the occasion of everything that happens; for you will find it an impediment to something else, but not to yourself.” Epictetus