Journey of Progress

This project started with a request:
Can you deliver a Theory of Change workshop in less than an hour?

This seemed impossible years ago, because this method is so complicated. But people still needed shorter, more interesting ways to devise plans and ambitions for their societal impact.

I began with following a senior colleague to his workshops to see how things were done. What do people focus on? What do they struggle with? I learned about the method and what other practitioners are doing through literature study, as well as comparing other tools and techniques.

I was inspired by recent examples of serious games in universities. So I sketched out ideas for cards and game processes of a ’Theory of Change game’ in Miro. Together with colleagues, we kept trying to work out what language and visuals to use; making the complex jargon more accessible, but still relevant to the academic target audience and their different applications.

Through prototyping, trying out some quick and simple paper versions within our own department I worked out out how long things would take, what the steps were, and what instructions help players the most.

We shared the game with more and more people; with research projects, student groups and entire departments doing their strategic planning. Journey of Progress was meant to be used without any knowledge of the Theory of Change method. However, our experiences showed that people need to understand the method before they play. These were interesting dilemmas: Could we give people just enough information without overwhelming them? What’s the best time to do so?

I wrote the script for and coordinated the recording of two supporting videos: one on the method, and one about the game. A short guide was also added to the box to help project managers (or ‘game masters’) introducing Journey of Progress in their teams where I also took care of the design and layout.